


Intimacy

by TigerLilyNoh



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Apocalypse 1.0 averted, Asexual Sam Winchester, Asexuality, Case Fic, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Lucifer was never freed, Magic, Masturbation, Mention Of Dub-Con, Oral Sex, Romance, Self-Acceptance, Team Free Will saved the day, Vaginal Sex, good!ruby
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-09
Updated: 2019-09-09
Packaged: 2020-10-13 04:04:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 35,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20576165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TigerLilyNoh/pseuds/TigerLilyNoh
Summary: Sam had largely given up on having a relationship.  The life of a hunter didn’t lend itself to romance, and the few partners he’d had had always pushed for more than he wanted to give.  So it was bittersweet to realize that he was developing a crush on Ruby, while working a case together.  But when she hits on him and he comes out to her as asexual, Sam soon finds acceptance in one of the most unlikely of people.  Now all that’s left is to learn to accept himself, figure out what intimacy means to them… and stop a mysterious killer that’s leaving a trail of exsanguinated bodies.





	1. Colleagues on the Case

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was written for the 2019 Asexual Supernatural Mini Bang. Special thanks to CenedraRiva for the wonderful artwork. Also, thank you to lastarael and monicawoe for their help betaing the story.

Sam climbed out of the silver 1967 Chevelle and stretched before going to grab his duffel bag from the trunk. He rested against the side of the car while watching Ruby check them into the motel. She was leaning across the counter, pushing her breasts forward in an attempt to flirt with the guy working the front desk, probably to try and get a nicer room. Apparently her breasts were big enough or perky enough or whatever-adjective enough that they seemed to ensnare many of the men they ran across. She knew how to use her body to work the room. That was for sure.

While waiting for her to return from working her magic, he pulled out his phone and called Dean to give him an update.

“We’re staying at the Velvet Rose Motel in Hartford,” Sam informed his brother.

“Sounds classy,” Dean replied. “The beds take quarters?”

“Don’t know yet.” He eyed the adult video store across the street. That didn’t bode well.

“Text me the address. I don’t have shit to write the name down with.”

“Will do,” Sam assured him. “You two still in Atlanta?”

“Yeah. I’m guessing we’ll be another couple days at least. You’d think a big city like this would have all their missing persons reports digital, but no. Go back eight years and I’m reading hieroglyphics,” Dean huffed. “Seriously though, I’m up to my ass in microfiche. Cas is making the rounds through every hospital looking for vics that match our pattern, but there are a lot of sick people to wade through.”

“Well, good luck.” He glanced around to make sure no one was in earshot before adding, “We’ve only got two victims over a week, so if things turn into a crisis over there we could pull an all-nighter and give you backup—”

“Run your case,” Dean said, dismissing the offer. “If people start dropping like flies we’ll call you, but for now we’re okay.”

“Fine. Keep me posted.”

“Hey.” Dean’s voice had turned slightly playful and, by the sound of it, he had covered the phone. “You and Ruby sharing a room?”

“Yeah.”

It was normal for him and Ruby to share a room, just like Dean and him or Dean and Castiel. There wasn’t much point in eating the extra cost. Ruby and Castiel didn’t technically need their own rooms, and the brothers were used to sharing. There wasn’t any special significance or opportunities deriving from the arrangement, despite what his brother’s mischievous tone implied.

“What does she wear when she sleeps?”

Sam rolled his eyes. Leave it to Dean to make everything about sex. It hardly even mattered that the elder Winchester barely got along with her. He was heterosexual, possibly bisexual, or some other flavor that at least enjoyed women and he wasn’t blind. The question probably hadn’t been meant to signal that he was actually interested in Ruby; he’d probably just wanted to tease Sam a bit, implying that his little brother might find her sexually attractive. How woefully off the mark he’d been.

“She doesn’t sleep,” Sam replied unamusedly. “And she wears the same old clothes as usual.”

“Sammy, I know you’re a choirboy” —Sam didn’t bother pointing out the irony that he was the brother that apparently still had some demon blood in his system from whatever Azazel had done to him— “but you do realize that Ruby is like three drinks and a cheesy line away from a one-night-stand.”

He didn’t appreciate the way Dean was talking about her. Yes, maybe Ruby was more indulgent than most, but Sam didn’t like his brother suggesting that he fuck her like some kind of easy conquest. He worked with her; they had a well-balanced relationship that he didn’t want to mess up— Never mind the fact that he wasn’t interested in her like that. It was complicated.

“So, she’s like the female version of you,” Sam shot back.

Dean paused a moment to consider the comparison and apparently couldn’t argue with it. “I’m just saying: have some fun for once.”

“I’ll keep you posted on the case.”

Dean paused, seemingly debating whether to prod some more, but he evidently thought better of it. “Same. Stay safe.”

“You too.”

* * *

As always, Sam tossed his bag onto the queen bed closest to the bathroom, claiming it for himself. Being a demon, Ruby’s metabolism didn’t strictly adhere to any schedule, meaning that she rarely needed the facilities for any number of uses. He made a point of not keeping a tally, but nine times out of ten if she needed to use a restroom for anything other than the shower it was after drinking enough alcohol to kill an entire college football team. 

Without bothering to take off her black leather boots, she plopped down on the other bed and began checking her phone while he started unpacking.

“I don’t see any breaking news on bodies in the area,” she commented.

“Both vics were found in the morning,” Sam noted aloud while setting up the motel ironing board. “Could be whatever we’re after hunts at night.”

“Sounds appropriately villainous.” She glanced up at him ironing his fed suit, then checked the clock. “We just got in. It’s almost six. Can’t we get some dinner before we hit the police station?”

“We can grab dinner after our initial contact with the cops. That way we can at least have some more intel to talk about while we’re eating.”

“Exsanguination is quite the delightful dinner table conversation,” she muttered while resuming scrolling through the news.

When he was done smoothing out his collar, he tossed the freshly pressed suit jacket onto his bed, then collected hers from her bag. They had a mutual understanding that he could dig around through the top half of her bags, but he didn’t dare venture past the black, silkie fabric that hinted at more private belongings hidden below. But as he dug through the top portion it became clear that a mess had been made. It took him a few seconds to pluck off several pieces of dried thistle that had stuck to her suit’s skirt. He held up one of the pieces for her to see. “One of your reagent bags popped open again.”

She scrambled across the bed in a flash, then began carefully picking through the suitcase to examine the damage. A plastic bag had ruptured at the seal, spilling a dozen types of dried flowers. With a sigh of relief, she pulled out three vials of dark liquids in various cool hues. “Sweet fucking Jesus. If this mixed with those we would’ve had a damn ectothermic fire on our hands.”

He wasn’t entirely sure what that meant, but anytime Ruby was that alarmed it was a bad sign. “Next time we split up the spell components that can potentially kill us.”

“We’ll need like ten more suitcases.”

“That’s not reassuring.”

“Hey, man.” She raised her hands. “Honesty doesn’t always make people feel better.”

Sam pointed at her. “You’re buying a fucking metal tackle box.” He made sure to soften his voice so that she knew he wasn’t actually upset. “And at some point you really need to at least teach me enough about the spell components and tools you keep so that I don’t accidentally start a magical wildfire next time I’m doing the ironing.”

“We’ll have a little spellcraft 101 at some point,” Ruby assured him as she carefully relocated the vials to an exterior pocket of her bag. “But let’s get rolling. I could kill for a snack.”

* * *

The interview with the local police turned up very little information. Both victims were women in their late twenties, wearing dresses fit for clubbing.

The first victim’s body had been found six days earlier, within hours of her death. She’d been left in a parking lot, possibly dumped from a car, but there were too many tire treads to identify a vehicle. After being thoroughly documented, her body had been released to her family for burial. 

The second victim had been found the night before last, shortly after her death. Once again, her body had been near a street, crumpled where an alleyway opened onto a main road. She had died by the same unusual means, raising the question of whether there was a vicious animal on the loose or some perverse serial killer. That’s when it had landed on Bobby’s desk, and been passed along to Sam and Ruby.

Both of the victims were largely uninjured, except for the single rough wound about the size of a business card on the inside of their right thighs, just at the tender flesh of the joint. They were both missing their panties, though there was no sign of rape. Their blood had been more or less drained.

“I’ve never seen wounds like this,” Sam commented while examining the ragged texture of the flesh around the injury.

Ruby leaned over to glance more closely at it, then replied, “Looks like someone was straddling some 40 grit sandpaper.”

The mental image made the corner of his mouth curl downward as he examined the precision of the wound. “The flesh is all torn up, but the attacker actually made a pretty on-target hole. It avoids going through most of the muscle and aims straight for the great saphenous vein and femoral artery.”

“Cut both a major vein and artery?” Ruby raised an eyebrow, curiosity piqued. “Perp’s really hitting them coming and going, isn’t he?”

“They died fast.” Sam nodded. Well, that was cold comfort and an unpleasant complication. Their killer might be able to strike quickly, spending hardly any time on the scene to be witnessed or caught.

“So we’re looking for someone with a medical background or maybe a species that is really anal about their feeding habits.”

“Seems like,” he sighed. “I’m guessing something is picking up women at bars" —he gestured to the photographs of the small, flattering dresses that the victims had been wearing— "then taking them somewhere to feed on them and dumping the bodies.” He examined the wrists and necks of the second victim, then double-checked the file on the first. “No bruising from being restrained or strangled.”

“Strangling doesn’t fit a typical blood-draining MO,” Ruby corrected him. “You want to be fast if you’re cutting the vein and artery. That means keeping the heart pumping—the faster the better.” She examined the veins on the victim’s chest. “Almost every spell that uses drained blood works better when it’s well oxygenated.”

Sam tilted his head acknowledging the point. “Aside from ghouls, most blood is drunk from live victims, presumably oxygenated.”

“Not super choked-out.”

“Well, something is stopping them from fighting back.” He held up the second victim’s right hand. “No defensive wounds.”

“Maybe it drugs them?” Ruby speculated.

“Toxicology came back normal.”

“There are plenty of supernatural drugs that wouldn’t be tested for.”

He nodded at her counterpoint. “Fair enough.”

Ruby pulled two small plastic baggies, both containing a cotton swab, from her jacket pocket. She used one swab to wipe the lips of the victim, then sealed it in the baggie.

“You think it may have been a venomous kiss?” he asked. They’d seen stranger things than that.

“If the vics really were picked up while clubbing, maybe,” she replied, then pulled out the second cotton swab. Without explanation, she wiped up a sample from the second victim’s vagina and vulva. While she worked, she glanced up, meeting Sam’s eyes. He always hated when their investigations turned so invasive, but his subtle shrug assured her that he knew it was part of the job. She zipped up the baggie, slipped it into her pocket, then asked, “Burgers or Thai food?”

“Like you have to ask.”

* * *

Ruby opened the door to the hole-in-the-wall Thai restaurant and walked in. She gestured to a waiter that they wanted a table for two as she gave the door a little shove so that it wouldn’t slam in front of Sam. The waiter waved at any of the six booths for them to choose from, so she picked the far one, positioning them away from a family of four and putting her back to the wall.

“You sure you don’t need to get those samples into the motel mini-fridge or something?” Sam asked while starting to look through the menu.

“I’m not gonna run anything that breaks down like DNA.” She flipped the laminated, one-page menu over in search of the beer list. “Think like a magical mass spectrometer, but less carbon and more the blood of the innocent.”

Sam smiled awkwardly at the waiter who had come to collect their order and possibly overheard the bizarre statement. He’d grown used to a certain amount of social discomfort over the last three years. It was par for the course when working with Ruby. 

After taking down Lilith and stopping the Apocalypse, she’d started working the occasional job with them out of sheer boredom. Over time she helped out more and more until finally she was just running around with them by default. In general she paired up with Sam, avoiding spending one-on-one time with Dean or Castiel. There wasn’t really animosity at that point, but the long car rides could quickly become unbearable without Sam to act as a moderating force.

Sam took the lead on ordering, since it was understood that, as a human, he needed to have a sufficient supply of food that he could actually eat. When not eating heart-attack-inducing meals, Ruby tended to seek out extremely spicy or sour food. Every time they ate somewhere that allowed its patrons to pick a level of heat, he knew she’d tack on her personal dish to scratch that itch.

“And massaman lamb curry, as hot as you can make it,” she told the waiter after Sam had placed the basic order. When the waiter made an unimpressed note for the chef, she added, “I’m serious. Make it burn like the fires of Hell.”

“Sure thing,” the waiter snickered as he went back to the kitchen.

Under her breath, she muttered, “Cowards are gonna give me mild.”

“You should really keep a ghost pepper in your purse to show them you mean business ahead of time,” Sam suggested.

“You want a spicy endothermic fire?”

He shook his head at her joke, then yawned and stretched a bit in his seat.

“You ever think about taking a vacation?” Ruby asked. “The world isn’t gonna end if you clock out for a few days.”

As much as he’d hate to admit it, he did feel in need of a break. The last three years had been a seemingly endless string of random cases with little in the way of reprieve. The discovery of the Men of Letters bunker a year earlier had at least given them a base of operations that didn’t involve crashing on Bobby’s lumpy couch. But that didn’t mean there wasn’t room for improvement. And yet, he wasn’t about to go on vacation.

“I don’t know.” He gave a little shrug. “Lots of ways the world could end in a handful of days.”

“If you’re the only thing standing between Earth and its untimely demise—again—then the rest of your hunter buddies suck at their job.”

“Armageddon is a bit above their pay grade,” he replied.

“Everything is above your pay grade when you don’t get paid.”

“See.” He lifted his tea cup in a fake toast. “It’s not even a job when you think about it.”

“Has anyone ever told you you’re a masochist?”

“I’m not a masochist. I’m just jaded.”

Ruby let out a dry laugh, but didn’t offer a correction or witty retort. The waiter delivered their meal. The dishes were family style, so they each served themselves in silence. Sam avoided the massaman lamb curry, which was ominously slicked with red oil thanks to Ruby’s instruction. Instead he stuck to the vegetarian pad thai and a stir-fried pumpkin dish. 

Her eyes started watering after her first bite of lamb curry. She coughed, then muttered, “It tastes like home.”

Ruby hadn’t been to Hell in the years since her exorcism by Lilith just before Dean’s death. When asked, she liked to tell people it was better that way, and in many ways it was, but the fact of the matter was that there were downsides to avoiding her home plane. Some of her powers had lost effectiveness, most notably being her teleportation. In theory, she could go back downstairs to recharge her batteries to full for a little while longer, but helping kill Lilith and stopping the ascension of Lucifer had made her more than a few enemies. So she accepted her handicap—at least she could still snap Sam or Dean like a twig.

“You getting homesick?” he asked, unsure if it was meant as a joke or genuinely curious.

“Only for the cooking. The Pits had spit-roasted meat like nobody’s business.” She grinned mischievously at him.

“I guess I’m not surprised that—” He braced himself against the table as a vision overtook his senses.

Everything tilted a few degrees counterclockwise and drifted to the left as it became oversaturated. Images of two little girls playing in the shadow of a brick building flickered through his mind. They were in grade school, huddled by the swings during recess. One of them had brought her mom’s grimoire to school, not realizing what it was. A few quick words later and dozens of children started screaming as the playground was swarmed by frogs. Then, just as abruptly as it had started, the vision was over.

His visions had briefly gone away for a little over 18 months. Bobby had speculated that Sam's psychic powers had been tied to Azazel and the yellow-eyed demon’s death had caused them to abruptly stop. That had been the working theory, adopted by the brothers, then Ruby and Castiel in turn, but roughly a year and a half later, when they had killed Lilith, something changed. The visions started up again. It eventually became clear that, as part of Lilith’s attempt to steal Sam’s support among the demons of Azazel’s army that were on Earth, she had magically blocked his powers. Her death had broken the hex, unleashing the visions back on him. Clairvoyance and precognition occasionally helped on cases, but it was still a literal headache.

“Vision?” Ruby asked. 

When he nodded subtly in response, she pushed a glass of ice water across the table for him. The prospect of having such a jarringly cold liquid pouring down his throat and gnawing at his stomach made him feel a bit nauseous. He held up his trembling hand, declining the offer, then leaned back, slouching slightly in the booth. She shifted in her seat as she looked around the restaurant to make sure that no one was paying too close attention to them.

“Anything we have to be worried about?”

“I didn’t recognize anyone and things didn’t line up with our vics. It wasn’t our case.” He stared at his meal, suddenly not hungry, then pulled out his phone and started jotting down notes of what he remembered. “I’ll call it in to Bobby once we’re out of here.”

Ruby waved to their server. “Check please, and some boxes.”

* * *

Sam filled Bobby in on his vision while Ruby drove them back to their motel room. With a little luck the intel would eventually fit into place with some friendly hunter’s case. Bobby was careful to keep the exact source of those tips secret. It was true that some hunters didn’t mind a little unorthodox help, but there were plenty that wouldn’t much care to be aided by a psychic, let alone one that had some not-so-tenuous connection with demons.

After getting back to the room, Sam took a shower to clear his head, then stretched out on his bed and started researching. Without any narrower leads, he began reading up on monsters or spirits that drained blood, hoping to find something that might leave the ragged wound. Meanwhile Ruby focused on the samples she’d taken. She had commandeered the small table in the corner of the room, covering it in various alchemical and scientific tools. He occasionally glanced up from his laptop to watch her, curious as to what she was doing but unwilling to bother her. They worked in near-silence, which was only broken when she periodically hummed along to the music she was listening to on their shared iPod.

“Hey, get this,” Sam said while sitting up more on his bed. When she took out her earbuds to give him her full attention, he continued. “The camazotz are monstrous vampire bats—“

“Bats?” Ruby interrupted, suddenly all the more interested in the possible suspect. “Like flying mammals, hang upside down?”

“Yeah.” He appreciated the enthusiastic look on her face. “Unlike vampires, vampire bats don’t actually bite their victims to drink their blood.“

“Right. They have those little barbed tongues that they use to lick wounds.” Her eyes widened as she started nodding, putting together the pieces.

“Apparently, camazotz tongues aren’t just barbed; they’re bladed, like a cheese grater.”

Her face contorted in disgust at the thought. “Those women got microplaned?” 

“Wouldn’t be weirdest thing we’ve seen.” Sam skimmed the article a bit more before adding, “And they can sedate their victims… with something that doesn’t show up on a normal tox screen.”

“Any word on how they roofie their vics: smoke bomb, hypnosis, spraying them in the mucous membranes like that dinosaur in Jurassic Park?”

Sam glanced back up at her, slightly thrown by the reference, but decided not to potentially indulge her tangents. “Nothing so far,” he answered. “Huh. I guess they only kill every few days—” 

“That’s consistent with the timing of our two vics,” Ruby acknowledged.

“—and sightings of these things only happen every thirty years or so, then they crop up on the scene for a few years before disappearing again, so the lore is pretty spotty. Some accounts call them phantoms, others beasts, one suggests that they’re a living curse.”

“The usual fuzzy, unsubstantiated rumors,” she summarized. “Are they humanoid?”

He scrolled through a few images depicting drawings and stone carvings dating back to the 1500s. Some appeared to be normal humans while others were giant bats. “That’s not entirely clear.”

“Oh, joy,” she said sarcastically. “We’re gonna have a hell of a time with this one. I can tell already. Bat-man, spirit monster with a tongue like a dremel bit— Fuck.” She sat up in her chair and looked at the results of a spell. “Both sets of lips have the same readings: saliva containing vodka and mild….” She thought about how to translate it for him. “Let’s go with mild neurotoxin.”

“If the toxin was on her lips, it sounds like our perp is passably human,” Sam pointed out. “‘Both sets of lips’?” he repeated, trying to decipher the phrase.

“Our monster went down on them, gave them the old tongue tickle.” Her face scrunched up at an unpleasant thought. “Jesus. I hope the blades and barbs on the tongue aren’t out all the time.”

He felt sick at the thought even without having the requisite anatomy to begin imagining sensations. “I’m guessing they’re retractable, otherwise it wouldn’t have gotten past first base. Anyway, there wasn’t any visible damage.” Sam looked at the autopsy photos. The disturbing modus operandi was starting to come together. “The suspect kissed them, transmitting the first dose of neurotoxin, then went down on them until the vics were paralyzed. After that it started drinking from the closest source.”

“Revving the engines probably got the blood flowing nicely too,” Ruby added in agreement. She tapped her fingers on the table for a moment. “Well, this might actually be the driest I’ve ever been in my life.”

Sam didn’t dare reply to that sort of thing, so he kept scrolling down the page. “Says here that camazotz only hunt the opposite sex—”

“Heteronormativity strikes again.”

“—so our perp is gonna be male.” He finished his point, but gave her comment a small head tilt of acknowledgement. “Not a big surprise there.”

“Well, on the plus side, if these things really do go dormant for a few decades at a time, we might be looking for someone with the fashion sense and cultural knowledge of the eighties,” she speculated. “Just keep an eye out for awful hair.” 

“Maybe.” He tried to imagine hunting based on personal grooming habits. “It’s probably easier to fake fashion scene.”

“Yeah. It’s all coming back around.” Ruby clicked her tongue, then muttered, “Old is new again.”

“I could make a joke about your age, but it seems unsportsmanlike.”

“Please, I’m a fine wine, getting better with age.” 

He might’ve offered a cute retort, but he was suddenly distracted trying to imagine living one’s life, peppered with thirty-year-long gaps. It seemed incredibly isolating. Maybe the camazotz operated on a different level, the way ghosts chased obsessions like vengeance or how angels generally felt divine purpose.

Regardless, the social skills necessary to charm victims despite potentially being behind the times was impressive. Sam stared at his laptop for a moment, then moved it off to the side. Their perp wasn’t likely to be the tech-savvy sort. The last time the guy had been active was before personal computers were commonplace. He looked at Ruby.

“After becoming a demon, did you ever go on dates?”

She stared at him, a bit confused. “Dates?”

“The last time the perp tried to pick up women was the eighties, then the fifties before that, and so on, for who-knows-how-long,” Sam elaborated. “What’s the persona? Who is he pretending to be that it doesn’t matter if he hasn’t seen the _ Lord of the Rings _ trilogy?”

“Someone who read the books,” she said as if it was obvious. “For centuries there was nothing hotter than being well-read. Why mess with a recipe for success?”

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but book nerds aren’t exactly on the cover of Vogue.” He shook his head. “It’s not as attractive as it used to be.”

Ruby took a moment to study him. A subtle smile spread across her face before she replied, “Call me old fashioned, I guess.” She waved her hand, dismissing some thought. “But I’m guessing it’s something like that: a poetry buff or classical philosophy—some canned bullshit that’ll never age out because it’s already classic.”

He nodded at the guess. It was as good a working theory as any. “So, do we know what our vics were into?”

Ruby shrugged. “Add it to the list of shit to run down.”


	2. Flirtation and Confession

It was getting late, leaving them unable to go interview the friends and family of the two victims. With some of their leads temporarily inaccessible, they decided to go stake out one of the more popular night clubs. There were slim odds that anything might turn up. In theory, the camazotz wouldn’t claim another victim for at least another day or two, but there was always a chance that he scouted his prey or simply enjoyed the hunt. So Sam left his necktie in the motel and undid a button, while Ruby performed a full wardrobe change from government peon-ware to a garnet-red, strapless cocktail dress—Very effective.

When they got to the club, they took different corners of the bar portion, so that they weren’t mistaken for a couple but they could keep an eye on each other. He was more worried about Ruby since the victims had both been women. Granted, she wasn’t human and was therefore probably less at risk of actual harm. She might be susceptible to the neurotoxin—he had no idea how that worked for demons—but at least there was a chance either her blood would be unappetizing to a camazotz or maybe she’d be able to survive having nearly all of her blood consumed. Regardless, he wasn’t particularly concerned for either of them as long as they exercised some basic caution.

He was mostly interested in scoping out the other patrons for signs of a camazotz. Their suspect was male and might have gaps in his knowledge and/or bad taste, but that was all they had to go off of. At that point, their best bet was to have Ruby play bait and for Sam to just watch for women being slipped a venomous kiss. As he scanned the room, his eyes occasionally lingered on some of the men that seemed particularly on the prowl. Unfortunately, stalking an easy sexual conquest and stalking dinner were practically indistinguishable.

His eyes apparently settled for too long on a man who looked as though he somehow edged his six-figure income into every conversation lasting more than five seconds. The man spotted him, became visibly uncomfortable, then made a very intentional showing of flirting with a nearby woman. The guy probably that Sam was attracted to men—That wasn’t entirely wrong. He’d been romantically interested in several men over the years, though there wasn’t much risk of stumbling upon the love of his life in some bar on a job. Hell, with everything his lifestyle entailed, he wasn’t sure that love was on the table at all.

He pointedly turned his attention away from the man as he sipped his cocktail. He glanced over at Ruby to check on her. She was perched at her table, chatting with a man seated across from her and another who had walked up to possibly intercede. Sam briefly made eye contact with her and raised an eyebrow, silently asking if she wanted help. She covertly tapped her earlobe twice while pushing some hair aside. The situation was under control.

He let out a small sigh as he finished his drink. It was gonna be a long night. Sure enough, a woman with long, wavy red hair and a diminutive gold sequin dress sat down at his table. Her name was Kelsey or Casey or something; he honestly had trouble hearing it over a roar of laughter from an adjacent table, but he didn’t have the heart or interest to ask for clarification. She asked about his work, so he recited some uninviting, canned cover about being an insurance investigator. That usually managed to deter at least half the people he used it on, but she didn’t seem to care. The way her eyes traveled across his features and paused a bit too long on his biceps before checking his hands—by his assessment, she was looking for sex and wouldn’t have cared if his job was something as boring as measuring grains of rice for uniformity.

After twenty minutes of feeble conversation, Sam was starting to get a bit fed up at how intently she was pursuing him. Even when he only gave the briefest replies to her questions and he looked around the room, she continued to make idle small talk. It was incredibly distracting, trying to maintain some semblance of a cover while also watching for threats. Just when he was trying to decide on the best way of shutting down any further advances, below the table, her hand settled on his knee. He resisted the urge to pull away, and instead swallowed dryly as he forced a polite smile. 

It wasn’t like he had anything against going out on a date, but this wasn’t a date; it never was. These encounters always involved working a cover in pursuit of an agenda. It was all a lie, except for the physicality of it. The gestures, the small contacts, the occasional and unwelcome violation of his comfort—those were all tangible, unfortunately so.

Most of the time he felt like he’d never find someone that he could be with. Even if he could somehow break from the routine of casual, unwanted flirtations at bars, his orientation was its own obstacle. It was apparently too hard for people to understand that he could be romantically attracted to someone without craving their body or chasing sexual gratification. He’d been burned before by people he’d been close to. It seemed inevitable that anyone he met on the job would do the same.

Predictably, she asked, “Do you want to go somewhere more private?”

Sam was fairly confident that she wasn’t the perp, so he tried to decline as politely as possible. The last thing he needed was to cause a scene on a stakeout. “I have an early morning tomorrow. Another time maybe.”

She wrote her number on the napkin, then got up. Her fingers dragged up his thigh as she leaned in to whisper in his ear, “Don’t leave me waiting too long.”

While she watched, he slipped the napkin into his pocket, evidently satisfying her. After paying his tab, Sam went outside to get some air. He leaned against the side of the building while waiting for Ruby to finish up. The whole thing had left him drained and almost feeling dirty. He hated putting on the act. The fact that he did some iteration of it every day hardly helped at all.

About fifteen minutes later, Ruby exited the club and spotted him. When she got closer, she asked, “You get lucky?”

“Haha,” he replied dryly. “No. Any luck on your end?”

She leaned against the wall beside him, then tilted her head, resting it lightly on his shoulder.

“A half-dozen strikeouts, then I thought I might have something. The guy had this cheesy-douche vibe that reminded me of like sixty percent of the men back in the seventies and eighties, but it didn’t pan out. He bought me six drinks and kept reaching up my skirt. I’m pretty sure he was trying to get me hammered, but he isn’t our guy. Vics didn’t have a high blood alcohol level.” She rocked on her heels a bit and her voice was oddly lighthearted. “Our perp is more of a charmer than that tool.”

He didn’t understand the casual smile on her face. It sounded to him like she’d had an even worse night than him. “You seem awfully pleased for having a guy try to date rape you.”

“I did get six drinks out of it,” she said, though considering how many times he’d seen her teleport out of a tab in her long life, it seemed insufficient justification. “More importantly, I made him match drinks with me.”

“Six drinks?” Sam looked back at the bar. “How did he walk out of there?”

“He didn’t. He was discreetly taken out the back by a bouncer. I had a bartender call an ambulance—”

“You surprisingly Good Samaritan.”

She pulled a wad of cash from her pocket. “—after I raided his wallet—” 

Sam nodded to himself. “That’s the Ruby I know.”

“—and left him a little token to remember me by.”

“Assuming he’s capable of remembering anything from the last few hours,” he pointed out. “What’d you leave?”

“Hexed business card slipped in among a couple he already had.” The corner of her lip curled up in a proud smirk. “As long as it’s on his person, anytime he gets within two meters of a woman he’ll smell like a sixteen-gallon bag of week-old socks.”

“That’s more like it.” Sam stifled a chuckle, somehow unsurprised by her creativity and vengefulness. It was hard to imagine a civilian figuring out that an otherwise mundane business card would be affecting his body odor, and how often was he likely to try hitting on someone without his wallet?

She wrapped her arm around his, gently pulling him from the wall. “C’mon. Let’s go get some dessert. We’ve both earned a treat.” She waved the cash. “And I know who’s buying.”

They strolled down the street a couple blocks to a little Italian restaurant that was still open at that late hour. Neither of them spoke while they walked, but honestly that was fine with him. He had spent enough time with her that there wasn’t any pressure to fill the quiet moments. Casually making their way, enjoying the gentle moonlight... the silence was calming; it wasn’t awkward.

After grabbing a table, then ordering their desserts and an espresso for Ruby, she began telling a story about some exceptional cup of coffee she’d once had in Vietnam. The tale was non-linear with dozens of tangents, but he’d come to be familiar with her personal style of storytelling. Eventually she’d get to the punchline, and when it came down to it, the journey would likely be of greater value than the destination. 

She barely even stopped long enough to take a few bites of her panna cotta. In her excitement at recalling a river cruise that was somehow related to coffee, she nearly missed her bite and had to dip her head down, snapping at the rogue scoop, catching it before it was lost. The paradoxically clumsy and dexterous move made Sam laugh so hard he accidentally blew out the candle between them, dimming their secluded corner of the restaurant. He looked around in mild embarrassment only to realize that the establishment had actually closed a bit earlier. They’d just been allowed to stay while the staff were cleaning up. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d closed out a restaurant. It was really nice.

* * *

Having struck out on the typical hunter-style stakeout, they decided to utilize Ruby’s background as a witch. Scrying spells could be very effective tools on a hunt, when performed by someone with the experience and imagination to compose them properly. Unfortunately, it also required a pretty detailed set of unique parameters to narrow the results to anything useful. They didn’t have any of the hair, blood, picture, or handwriting of the perp necessary to find him. Instead, she decided to try searching for the second victim’s blood, hoping that some might’ve spilled on his clothing.

Sam watched Ruby, admiring the way her fingers delicately traced the raven bones she was positioning. He appreciated her craftsmanship and care. It was true that performing those intricate rituals required a considerable amount of finesse, but watching her work, he didn’t take the nearly-carefree display of skill for granted. 

He shuddered to think how Dean would fare at the role of resident witch. His brother had become a bit less squeamish when it came to the previously-living spell components. Ruby’s habit of teasing Dean by holding the juicy bits out for him to see whenever he was around had actually worked to desensitize the elder Winchester ever-so-slightly. Despite that, Dean still dumped ingredients together a bit more haphazardly than anyone really liked. As rare as it was for him to do the casting, it had been a miracle that he’d only every almost killed all of them once.

After the… unpleasant incident, Castiel had been deemed the caster between the two of them, but that wasn’t to say he was particularly good at it. He just didn’t have the ominous track record. The angel could work his way through a recipe as well as anyone with a basic understanding of linear progression and how to pronounce the incantations. Unfortunately, his background as a powerful, divine creature left him a bit predisposed to charge ahead on some unconscious manifestation of faith or confidence when another caster might’ve taken twice as long to do the job five times better.

Ruby stood in stark contrast to both of them. The more time Sam spent with her the more convinced he became that she was one of those rare individuals that blurred the line between art and science. Maybe it was her centuries of hands-on experience with both the material and magical worlds. Maybe it was some innate talent. All he knew was that recently, when he watched her, there was a sort of beauty that she instilled into her work—when she wanted to. 

He could see it in her spellcraft, and those moments were one of the reasons he enjoyed working with her. In the last few months, more and more he’d noticed those glimpses, when she really cared. He’d grown to know her enough to spot the occasional softening of her willfully-carefree exterior and each time he saw that the complicated person underneath it was captivating. She was one of the few people that truly left him in a state of wonder—sometimes at the absurdity of her actions, but often for more flattering reasons. Watching her literally work her magic, gave him a lightness, the same sort he felt when they’d talked about nothing important over dessert for two hours the night before.

She glanced up and smiled at him. The expression of playful admiration made his chest feel a bit tight, but before he had time to dwell on the knot, she told him, “Thanks for not getting weirded out by the bones and stuff.”

He shrugged. “It’s part of the spellwork.”

“But still. Cas always watches me like I’m about to accidentally open a gate to Hell and Dean whines nonstop—The spells are like a thousand years old; of course they’re gonna include dead, messy stuff. What’s he expect? Pulling shit up on an iPad?” She tilted her head a bit to the side, possibly reassessing the practicality of using a tablet in witchcraft. “Anyway, it’s nice to just do my thing without feeling like there’s someone up in the peanut gallery.”

“Does me watching right now bug you?”

“No,” she assured him. Her brow furrowed subtly as she considered something. “I don’t know. I guess, you’re different.”

Sam smiled at her comment, but he could feel a little nervous lump forming in the pit of his stomach. For a few seconds he couldn’t tell what was making him feel like that, then he noticed the way Ruby’s eyes almost twinkled at him and the feeling flared. 

Fuck.

He had a crush on her. It was like he was a teenager all over again, minus the weird body changes. For a moment he was terrified that he’d started blushing, but a quick glance at the mirror assured him that it wasn’t too obvious. As casually as he could manage, he got up from the bed, then went into the bathroom. Closing the door behind, he leaned against the sink, looked at his reflection in the mirror and wondered what he was going to do.

* * *

Interviewing the victims’ friends and family was a tedious task. As much as Ruby had learned over the last few years, she still occasionally had trouble working the cover of a federal investigator, especially when it came to interacting with grieving civilians. Often enough, she was oddly both sympathetic and annoyed by all the sorrow. In some ways Sam could understand; she was intimately familiar with death, having personally experienced it. He could relate to some desensitization, though it seemed to be less intense for him, likely because death had never actually taken for him or his brother. Ruby was a little too quick to jump into questions, with not enough care in her voice. It wasn’t that she didn’t feel. From time to time it became obvious to him that she cared deeply, patently so when her eyes lit with rage upon hearing some vital clue detailing the tragic circumstances leading to the grizzly death. 

For better or worse, there were no epiphanies. No pieces of the puzzle clicked into place, revealing the identity of the  camazotz or the location of some preferred hunting ground. Instead, the first victim’s roommate and second’s parents each mentioned the victims’ love of history, but that was a fairly weak lead. They stopped by the local university to check and see if there were any visiting history professors, but everyone in the department had lived in town for at least two years.

“You miss your campus days?” Ruby asked as they got into the car to leave the school.

He mulled over the question for a moment. That chapter had been closed a long time ago, and despite its significant impact on his formative years, he rarely revisited it. “Things were simpler then—or at least the body count was lower. It’s a different world, admittedly, one I liked.”

“Well, if we ever defeat all evil and you hang up your hunter hat, there’s probably a tweed jacket somewhere with your name on it.”

“I dropped out,” he reminded her. “Being a college professor takes a lot of credentials.”

“You have more credentials than ten PHDs combined—maybe yours are made at Kinkos and via hacking databases, but that’s its own measure of brains if people weren’t so hung up on the fraud thing.” She smiled at him. “You’re such a charmer, you could probably get a job at the actual FBI.”

He laughed at her absurd suggestion. “I think someone would notice when I don’t have any anecdotes relating to specific instructors or superiors.”

“Either that or you could have the best anecdotes,” she countered, then improvised, “Remember when you and Assistant Director Skinner were kidnapped by a white nationalist, so you gnawed through the rope with your teeth, saved sixth hostages, and Skinner was so impressed that he gave you a handjob in the car?”

“I don’t remember that episode of the X-Files,” he commented as he pulled into the parking spot in front of their motel room. After turning off the engine, he more sincerely added, “I don’t think I’d fit in with the FBI. Everything’s so structured. Don’t get me wrong, I like systems—“

“But you like being effective more.” She nodded. “You’re good at what you do. Anyone with half a brain would trust you. Unfortunately, bureaucracies aren’t usually equipped to deal with the ruggedly handsome protagonist, or at least that’s what tv shows and movies have taught me.”

He spared her a glance at the handsome comment as they got out of the car. It wasn’t uncommon for people to compliment his physical attractiveness, but he couldn’t recall her doing that before. He wasn’t sure whether it had been sincere or if it was just part of the greater joke. His eyes tried to take in the subtle tells of her body as he followed her into the motel room. She had her usual lightness and a playful spring in her step, but she hadn’t mischievously raised an eyebrow, silently asking for recognition of her joke.

“If you couldn’t pass for a real fed,” she said when they got inside their room, then I’d stick out like a leopard in a kiddie pool.”

“Leopard in a kiddie pool?” Sam repeated as he took off his jacket  and tie, then undid a few buttons of his shirt before sitting down on the edge of his bed.  He chuckled a bit while smiling up at her.

Ruby moved to stand in front of him, then put her hands on her hips, determined to not have to justify such a random and oddly specific metaphor.  She had a devilish smirk on her face, the sort that might lure sailors to jagged rocks. Her eyes glanced down his body for a moment, as if sizing him up, ready to defend her bizarre conviction. He leaned in a bit, lifting his chin to face her, meeting her challenge.

“You’re too lively to be a fed,” he told her, then cut off her inevitable witty retort. “Figuratively lively.”

“I could be one of those cops that’s always breaking the rules and is on probation like all those action movies Dean loves.”

“John McClane is not a realistic model,” he said with a grin.

“I don’t know. He seems pretty relatable: always grumpy, kills a lot of people, corny jokes at inopportune times, and I never really was a very good subordinate,” Ruby explained.  She rocked on her heels a bit, playfully inching closer to him, then leaned in and whispered,  “I know this might come as a shock, but I can be something of a troublemaker.”

Sam  raised an eyebrow  at her. “Oh, I’m sure you’re a handful.”

In almost a purr she replied, “You have no idea.”

Ruby closed the distance and kissed him. He hesitated for a moment, caught between the desire to reciprocate the gesture and stopping her so that she wouldn’t get the wrong idea. He kissed her back, caught up in the dizzying excitement while trying to buy himself some time to figure out what to do. In the back of his brain he was scrambling to parse the many conflicting feelings that had suddenly been dumped on him. As they kissed, she climbed up onto his lap. Her fingers started sliding down his chest towards his belt. His heart was pounding. He could feel his fear and anxiety turning to acid in his stomach. 

For a moment he thought about just letting her do whatever she was planning to him. He’d had sex three times during college after being too embarrassed to stop his dates. Each experience had been unpleasant, though twice his partners hadn’t even noticed his discomfort. He could endure it if he had to, but Ruby was different. She was an important part of his life, someone he saw nearly everyday. If he gave her the expectation of sex, then she might very well push for it regularly. And on top of that risk, he genuinely liked her. The thought of lying to her about something so intimate to them, it felt profoundly wrong.

He took her hand, pulling it away from where it had slipped inside his waistband, then whispered, “You’re incredible, but I….”

She leaned back to look him in the eyes. “You like guys?” she guessed. “Give me like fifteen minutes, I’ll find a guy to ride you with.”

He grabbed her shoulders, physically preventing her from rushing off in search of some innocent guy for him to fuck. Everything was happening so fast that in his brain’s haste to keep up he blurted out, “I’m just not into sex.”

His heart was hammering in his chest. As quickly as time had moved moments ago, suddenly the seconds felt agonizingly long, waiting for her reaction. He was desperately trying to think of something to say to salvage the situation before things could get any worse, but his mind was full of panicked static. Even if, through some fucking miracle, intelligent, reassuring words popped into his head, his mouth had suddenly turned very dry.

Ruby let go of him, withdrawing ever so slightly. “Is it cause I’m a demon?”

“No! No,” Sam hastily assured her, terrified that he’d just insulted her. “It’s not a species thing; it’s not. I just don’t like sex.” 

She blinked at him a few times, slowly trying to process the concept. “You don’t like sex?”

“Yeah.”

Her head tilted a few degrees to the side and her brow furrowed. “Do you think I’m not hot?”

“I think you’re amazing, but your body….” He could literally feel cold sweat forming on his skin. “It’s fine, but it’s just a body.”

Ruby got up off his lap, then crossed the room and leaned against the dresser. She wasn’t looking at him. Her shoulders were down, posture withdrawn. He’d never seen that from her. She looked almost dejected. The sight of her like that chilled him. He’d done it. It’d be just like a dozen times before. She’d be offended that he didn’t find her attractive in the way that she wanted, that he couldn’t give her what she desired. He tried to swallow the tightness in his throat in order to apologize, when she turned back to face him.

“I’m almost six hundred years old. I’ve fucked literally countless men and women in my very long afterlife.” She idly gnawed on her necklace chain for a few seconds while thinking. “This body is just a body,” she muttered, repeating his words to herself more than him. Her expression was closer to confusion than being insulted. “These tits, ass, the prospect of pounding this pussy—you don’t care. You don’t care about this bag of animated meat. You’re saying you like  _ me _ .”

Sam couldn’t actually tell if she was upset or not. The tone of her voice didn’t sound like she was offended. He cautiously replied, “I just, I like the person you are, not the person you’re wearing.”

Ruby face went slack, leaving her mouth hanging open a bit. She caught herself and visibly swallowed as her ears turned slightly pink. “I’ve gotta….” Her mouth moved silently trying to find some words, then her voice quivered as she added, “I—I’ll come back.” She grabbed her keys, then walked out the door.

Sam was so shaken by the sound of her closing the door that he just stared at the empty space where she’d been standing for what felt like a whole minute before he lay back on the bed and covering his face with his hands. Despite her assurance that she’d return he still felt like a fool. He’d scared her off. She was just looking for something physical and not only had he stopped her from that, he’d countered by expressing a more romantic sentiment than she had been prepared for. He could barely believe that he was dumb enough to tell a demon that he had feelings for her. That was just asking for heartbreak.

He’d gotten greedy, letting his guard down with her. It’d just been so long since he’d had someone in his life that made him feel that way. He missed that spark, the excitement and joy. Rationally, he knew that a relationship had never been in the cards, not for someone like him—never in a million years with someone as hedonistic as her. But fuck, he’d been happy and he had just wanted to pretend for however short a time he could, that he could find someone. He wiped away a few tears of familiar grief, then suddenly felt tired in anticipation of the bleak routine that was waiting for him when or if she finally returned.

After a half hour, she returned. Her cheeks were rosy, as if she’d gone for a long, brisk walk. He sat up, expectantly, mind racing to figure what he could say that might undo the damage, but she spoke first.

“Is kissing okay?”

He’d been anticipating some sort of uncomfortable… well, break-up wasn’t the right word. They weren’t dating. The extent of their partnership was professional, plus a dizzying sprinkling of emotions and hormones tossed in at the last minute. He was so thrown by her reasonable question that he quietly replied, “What?”

“Sam, I’m not like you. I like sex and all that stuff, but I’m not gonna be weird about this—” She rolled her eyes. “Okay, so I might be awkward. I’ve never had to deal with this before, but I’m not gonna just blow you off because stuff is complicated. Demon witch, psychic hunter, giant clam-diving bat-dude— Our whole lives are complicated. So fuck tip-toeing propriety: Are you okay with us kissing?”

“Yeah. I like….” He felt so embarrassed trying to find the words to articulate his feelings for the first time in his life. It hadn’t even occurred to him that no one had ever asked him about kissing before. “I like being close. I want to be with you. I just don’t—I’m not interested in going down on you or fucking you.” His chest heaved a bit. “I think… I think I’m still figuring it out.” 

She nodded to herself as she processed the scenario, then told him, “You need to tell me if I start crossing the line, okay? You’re the psychic; not me. I don’t know what I’m doing.” She shrugged a little defensively. “But I’m fine trying.”

He had to fight a knot of emotion that had grown in his throat. “Trying is more than anyone has ever done for me.” 


	3. Butterflies Before Bats

That night he barely slept. He lay awake in his bed, uncomfortably aware that Ruby was in the room with him. Some nights she’d go out to entertain herself, but in smaller towns with an early last call she would often stay in. It was normal for her to quietly read by the dim illumination of a small, portable light she kept for that purpose. He’d grown used to hearing her rustling around a bit or turning the pages of her books. Her lingering about had never been an issue, but suddenly their relationship had become more complicated.

At the end of their conversation, they’d awkwardly stared at each other, unsure what to do with the… well, he wasn’t sure if it really counted as sexual tension when it was one-sided. There was something between them, albeit a hard to articulate collision of chemical impulses and what was surely an emotional minefield. He was struggling to find the right thing to say or do. Never had he come out to someone before and had them stay. He had no clue how to move forward. It was equally thrilling and terrifying, and entirely paralyzing.

Sam had rested his elbows on his knees, then buried his face in his hands and let out a sigh. “I’m sorry I—“

“Look at me.” 

When he’d glanced up at her, she was standing right in front of him. She knelt down so that they were more or less at eye-level. He stared at her eyes, so close to his own and noticed for the first time that her irises were chestnut. The detail shook him. In all the years that she had been wearing that body, he’d never noticed the shade of her eyes. Her fingers delicately touched his chin, drawing him forward a few inches into a more thoughtful kiss than before. It wasn’t a launchpad for something more. It was just a kiss. For the first time in his life, his lips and tongue were touching another’s and his admiration for his partner wasn’t drowned out by the fear that they would push him too far. His heart was pounding in his chest. The newness was stunning.

Ruby pulled back, then told him, “Don’t stress. We’ll start with the same old routine, but sometimes kissing.”

“I’ve never actually done this before,” he said quietly, then hastily corrected himself. “I mean I’ve kissed people—I’ve done stuff—I’ve, um—“ She placed a finger to his lips, silencing his nervous rambling.

“I’ve never actually done  _ this _ either,” she assured him before tilting her head towards the clock reading two in the morning. “How about we call that a goodnight kiss and tomorrow with our fresh eyes we’ll be less like a pair of goddamn teenagers?”

“Deal.”

Despite the implicit agreement that he’d get some sleep, he lay for a long while in the darkness with his eyes closed, listening to her turning pages of her book. Even holding still, his heart and mind raced and stumbled, anxiously running scenarios over and over. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been kept up so late with anticipation—probably the night before taking the LSAT. God, he really did feel like a teenager. 

* * *

The next morning Sam woke up to find the motel room empty. It wasn’t unheard of for Ruby to be out running errands in the morning while he slept. At least a third of the time she used the early daylight hours to do things like refueling their car or any other minor tasks to fill her ample free time. He was comforted to see that she had thoughtfully left him a note to reassure him that she hadn’t been scared off. The scribbled message explained, “Getting round one of coffee and scoping out breakfast.”

He grabbed some clothes, went into the bathroom, closed the door, then looked at his reflection in the mirror.

“You can do this,” he whispered to himself. “It’s just Ruby. Same old friend….” 

He didn’t dare breathe the sentiment that it might’ve really been blossoming into something more. For now he was just grateful that she was humoring him. Whether they could actually make it work for both of them was another matter. Time would tell if they were remotely compatible  as more than friends —if she could be happy despite his circumstances. 

After taking off his pajama pants, he started the shower, and climbed in. He let the warm water run over him for several minutes, trying to ease the tension in his muscles. When he was feeling particularly relaxed, he peeked around the shower curtain briefly to make sure that Ruby hadn’t snuck up on him—an admittedly irrational fear, but one that he’d indulged all the same—then he began stroking his dick.

Of the dozen people he’d told that he was asexual, none of them had asked if he actually experienced sexual pleasure. The fact of the matter was that he did, and he even felt aroused by people. Maybe he didn’t find their bodies enticing, but he could admire the person. Standing under the soothing water pouring down his body, he thought of Ruby’s nimble fingers tracing the raven bones. She’d been casting a spell from memory while chatting with him. It was a subtle display of her expertise and elegance. Moments like that were when he could catch glimpses at the true power she possessed. She saw something in him, and more importantly, she thought it was worth accommodating him. Ruby wanted him and it wasn’t only sexual desire. She wanted  _ him _ .

He came at the thought, savored the release for a few seconds, then leaned against the tile wall of the shower. The water cascaded down his back. He opened his eyes and looked at his still-temporarily-hard dick, resting in his right hand. It was difficult to believe that something like that was so important to so many people, that it could be the crux of entire relationships. The woman at the bar, countless people he’d interacted with while working a case, those he’d shared some of his closest bonds with in college—so many interactions were motivated by such a visceral, fleeting pleasure. The idea made his stomach churn with acid that dissolved whatever decadent sensations had risen up from his orgasm.

Of course, when it came down to it, he understood why sex was a big deal. On a fundamental level it was a critical step in the perpetuation of most life on Earth. The evolutionary imperative had spawned all sorts of mating rituals, which have ingrained themselves in modern society so deeply that even a disinterested person like himself couldn’t escape it— 

Not to mention, coming just felt good. He enjoyed jerking off, when he managed to get around to it. The gradual build and mind-blurring rush—many days, while working jobs, that was his only moment of self-indulgence. He wasn’t exactly bothered by sexual pleasure itself. Mostly he just wished that chasing that high wasn’t so inextricably tied to sharing it with a partner in such a physical way. 

Abstractly, he wanted his partners to have pleasure. He’d like their relationship to produce that boon, but he didn’t want to perform the uncomfortable acts necessary to do it himself. For one thing, he was worried that his partner might sense his anxiety and it would create a rift between them. But on a more basic level, he hated lying to his partners. Whether in college or while working a cover, he’d spent so much of his life pretending to be someone he wasn’t. He wouldn’t do that to Ruby. She was willing to give him a chance; he owed her that much.

* * *

Neither of them mentioned the events of the previous night while they drove to breakfast. Ruby delivered them unto what she had heard was home to the best country potatoes in the entire county. They grabbed a table and ordered without incident. The way the silence stretched, he couldn’t tell if the confession had left some kind of tension between them or if the entire incident had been a weird dream— Honestly, that would’ve been the simplest answer, one that also left him less embarrassed. But, as with nearly every aspect of his life, simple wasn’t in the cards.

“You gonna play footsie with me under the table?” Ruby asked with a little curl of her lip. “You look like you’re working up the nerve to ask me to prom. Are you actually sweating?”

He let out a sigh that seemed to release a bit of tension. Despite her bringing attention to his visible nerves, at least it was out in the open. “Maybe I’m anxious,” he admitted. “You’re intimidating.”

“Thank you.” She sipped her second coffee of the day. “What’re you scared of? I already told you I’m here to play.”

His fingers idly traced the rim of his coffee cup. “You’re here to play a game where we don’t know the rules.”

Ruby leaned forward, over the table a bit. “We write the rules— Okay, maybe you feel the rules out, then the two of us figure out how to transcribe it, but close enough.”

She made it sound so easy. Of course, she did. That was part of her charm. Whether it was justified or not, she had a confidence that nearly fooled him. Helen of Troy might’ve had the face capable of launching a thousand ships, but when Ruby turned it on, he was pretty sure she could get such bold action with a whisper of suggestion.

“It’s complicated,” he explained before correcting, “confusing.”

“I bet.” Her foot gently tapped his, lightly prodding him to act. “Tell me something simple. You don’t have to impress me with your big brain. Just don’t sit around silently brooding; it’s only cute for the first fifteen minutes.”

The corner of his lip reflexively curled at the compliment. While he was grateful for her attempt to lighten the mood, it didn’t really help him know what to say. He wished that he had the answers, that he could speak some truth that he’d been refining over the years, but honestly it was all a fuzzy mess. For so many years it had just been an unease, a feeling that he was different, maybe even broken. Then as he’d started identifying the disparity, it’d left him too discouraged to dig into it. He’d buried that piece of him the same way that his brother buried trauma because, frankly, the isolation and fear, it hurt. And as much as he appreciated Ruby’s willingness to start at square one, it was embarrassing to understand so little about something so essential to him. He was supposed to be the smart one and he didn’t have any answers.

“Something simple.” He let out an unamused huff as he stared at his mug of coffee, then muttered, “It’d be easier if I was normal.”

“Tough shit. You’re too interesting to be normal.” She shifted, then looked at him with a bit more seriousness. “You really are freaked out about this, aren’t you?”

“Every time I tried to be with someone—to really be me—it fell apart so fast.” His throat felt tight, but he fought through it. “Yeah, I’m kinda freaked out.”

Her brow furrowed slightly. “You think I’m gonna drop you on day one?”

“It’s just, I’m asking a lot and we’d have to take it slow. And you’re always so—” He anxiously gestured at her before thinking better of the potentially rude move. “You have this ‘go’ and it’s great, but….”

He was scared that she’d grow tired of accommodating him and his particularities, though he couldn’t bring himself to fully voice the fear. She wasn’t dumb and it wasn’t as though he was superstitious, but the idea of expressing those worries unnerved him. Even if stating a concern wouldn’t make it more real, his embarrassment cut him off.

“Sam, I’m a demon. Ninety-nine percent of my species gets by on a healthy diet of rape, plunder, and murder. Meanwhile, I’m sitting in the middle of fucking nowhere waiting for some random person to die like a pathetic vulture.” She paused a beat to let him process her point. “Since when do I lack for patience?”

A small smile crept across his face at her question. He felt a subtle ache of emotion at her words of assurance. In an attempt to stop them from delving too deep too quickly into emotional territory, he replied, “I don’t know. What about that vending machine at the hospital last month?”

“It had it fucking coming.” She pointed at him, preempting any arguments about her moral high ground. “It doesn’t count as plundering if the thing took my dollar first.”

He nearly laughed at her feeble yet creative justification. “The great state of Minnesota might disagree—and also take issue with the property damage.”

“Private property.”

“Public hospital,” he corrected.

She huffed a breath out her nose while pouting slightly. “Fuck, you’re attractive.”

He shifted a bit at her compliment. For a moment he assumed that she’d made a non sequitur about his physical appearance. As much as he rationally was in favor of her happening to enjoy the way he looked, within the context of their new relationship, the thought triggered a few memories of old crushes prioritizing his body. But at a second glance, he noticed the way her gaze was fixed on his eyes. She wasn’t admiring his torso, lips, and naturally-blessed hair; she was seeing  _ him _ . 

It was his quick wit that she found enticing. All the sudden changes between them, delving into such a personal and historically painful area of his life—his knee jerk reaction had been that something was wrong, that they were falling into the same old pattern. His fear had tricked him into ignoring what he truly knew about Ruby. She loved to trade retorts. It was one of her favorite pastimes. And when he was clever enough to outmaneuver her, she never seemed disappointed. She wanted a partner who could spar with her; that’s what she’d found attractive. The thought made his affection for her flare.

Before he could think of what to say, the waitress dropped off their breakfasts. They silently started eating while every few seconds stealing not-so-subtle glances at each other. For a moment, he actually did consider jokingly playing footsie with her under the table, but decided against such a bold and arguably uncharacteristic act. Instead he sat there, eating his egg white omelette while trying not to look like either an overeager middle schooler or someone partaking in a last meal.

After a few minutes, Ruby furrowed her brow, then candidly turned her attention away from her meal, to him. In a quiet, serious tone she asked, “Dean doesn’t know, does he?”

Sam hesitated for a moment. None of his family or current friends knew, except her. To say that it never came up would be a lie; just a couple days ago Dean had suggested he try to fuck Ruby. It would’ve been a perfectly reasonable opening for a correction, but trying to explain it…. He was having a hard enough time articulating things for her. This aspect of him had always been a part of him, but that didn’t mean that he felt capable of making someone else understand. Even with Ruby trying, he was still painfully aware that asexuality was difficult for many people to wrap their heads around. It was subjective and existed as a spectrum. As much as he loved Dean, the prospect of talking to him about this was daunting as hell.

After considering the matter for a few seconds, in what he hoped was an unoffended voice he told her, “It’s none of his business.”

“True, but I know he talks to you about sex and stuff.” She stabbed a few chunks of country potatoes, dipped them in ketchup, and ate them. “I’m just saying, you don’t need to keep your mouth shut for the rest of your life. If he makes you uncomfortable, you can tell him to fuck off.”

“Not everyone is as fine with this as you,” he explained. “Last person I told suggested I go to a therapist—like I was burying abuse, I guess—then she suggested that I see a doctor. She thought I didn’t have enough testosterone or had ED or something.” He idly tapped his fork on his plate, then added, “All that’s fine, by the way.”

“I never said anything was wrong with you,” she assured him before correcting herself. “I never  _ thought _ anything was wrong with you.”

Without lifting his head very much, he looked at her. He felt oddly small and vulnerable. She’d spotted the weak point in his armor, but rather than ignore it in some attempt to protect his pride, she’d leaned in and started assessing it for repair.

A delicate silence hung in the air for a moment, but she mercifully broke the tension by adding, “I mean, I thought something was wrong with you when you bought that weird shirt that looks like bacon.”

“It’s rust-colored,” he replied, grateful for the turn. “Warm tones can be very flattering.”

“I just want to stick that shirt in the oven for twenty-five minutes at 400° and watch as Dean materializes out of thin air with cheeseburgers.”

“You overcook bacon,” he told her before taking another bite of omelette.

“You’re practically a vegetarian. You don’t get a vote—and it’s going on a cheeseburger. You need textural variety otherwise you might as well be eating mac-and-cheese meatloaf.”

The thought of such a greasy, heavy pile of meat and dairy made his stomach churn, anticipatorily pained. “Can we go back to talking about something less terrifying, like me coming out to my brother?” he asked sarcastically, caught between sincerely wanting to address the source of anxiety and also wanting to avoid it through humor.

The corners of her lips curled slightly, but her eyes were thoughtful. “It’s whatever you’re comfortable with.” She sipped her coffee before adding, “I mostly just get a kick out of people telling Dean he’s wrong. So I’m just sitting here, quietly cheering you on until you’re ready.”

She slid her hand across the table until it was next to his own. He glanced between her eyes and hand, then gently took hers in his. She lightly squeezed back in a gesture of reassurance. To his surprise it actually felt really nice to just hold hands with her. For most of his life society had been telling him that there was a hierarchy of acts of affection and that holding hands was something juvenile, a brief stepping stone on the path to more. He couldn’t remember the last person he’d held hands with; he’d forgotten how lovely it was. Her skin was so soft and warm, but more than that, it was a symbol of support and affection that was tangible.

In that moment, another piece of the puzzle clicked into place. For all his aversion to sex, when it came right down to it he was starved for physical comfort. As long as he could remember, he had limited affectionate physical contact with people for fear that one thing would lead to another. His fear had placed a barrier between him and those around him. Yes, he was still scared—so much was changing and all he’d ever known before had been heartbreak—but he greedily wanted her delicate touch to be a part of his life. It hadn’t occurred to him how much he longed to just be held. He smiled at her, reassuring her that the contact was welcome. God, it was welcome.

He’d never had that sort of thing happen to him before. They liked each other in some capacity that was more than colleagues or friends. More than that, she was willing to try accommodating his sexual preferences. Unfortunately, he had no idea what that entailed on a technical level. For his entire life he’d been trying to fit into a mold that wasn’t his own, to be normal on multiple levels. It hadn’t even occurred to him that someone might come along and try to meet him halfway—more than halfway…. He didn’t know what halfway meant.

That second day, they kissed a bit more. It seemed like safe territory. A familiar activity that landed nicely in the more-than-friends range, but it was also tame enough that his anxiety wasn’t triggered. He’d kissed various classmates in high school and college. It was customary at the very least, and occasionally, for people he’d really cared about, it was a nice way of nonverbally expressing his feelings. He wasn’t really sure what most people got out of exchanging saliva with another person, but he did enjoy when he could feel Ruby’s lips curl with pleasure.  And the way her hands cupped his cheek, her fingers ran through his hair, or venturing into an embrace—objectively-weird saliva issue be damned; he kind of enjoyed kissing.

* * *

With their killer on the loose, the initial impulse was to scour the town as they had done the previous night, but that hadn’t yielded any leads. Hitting the ground was an option, one best used when nobody had any brighter ideas. Rather than spending another evening blindly scoping out a nightclub, Ruby suggested she try running a divination spell, attempting to detect... well, he wasn’t entirely sure.

“You said it’s like a death omen?” he asked as he compulsively adjusted the alignment of two spare sprigs of withertwig. It didn’t quite make sense to him; he’d never heard of a death omen panning out, and if such a thing was detectable, surely they would do that for every case.

She finished laying out the map of the town, then patted his cheek in a playfully patronizing move before explaining, “I’m looking for a backward-facing echo of the material fold.”

His brow furrowed while he tried parsing the meaning. “That sounds like word salad.”

“That’s because I’m translating a twenty-three syllable word from Abyssal.” Her eyes held a twinkle of pride. “Basically, when things pop into the material plane—this world, there’s a very small shockwave that ripples out on a lot of different levels.” She used her hands to indicate a series of rings spreading out from a single point before fading. “Sometimes the ripples go backward in time, which is a way that omens can pop up, at least the ones that aren’t some demon or demigod having some fun spooking the locals. Anyway, if the camazotz is gonna kill someone tomorrow, there’s gonna be a reaper poppin’ in around them. It’s a long shot—these sorts of spells are notoriously fickle—but until we get any bright ideas, I’m willing to try.”

“Fair enough,” he replied. His online research into the camazotz had turned up somewhat limited results. The popularity of Batman the superhero had yielded many of his search queries ineffective. Occasionally, he found something on the actual supernatural entity, but at that point he wasn’t opposed to trying new methods. “I’ll keep slamming my face into my laptop.”

As he turned to leave her to her work, she lightly grabbed his wrist, then said, “Hey, wait.” He glanced back at her to see that she was holding up a fine paintbrush. “Help me.”

Aside from when he was a teenager giving Bobby or his dad a hand, he couldn’t recall having a more skilled spellcrafter invite him to assist with a spell. If anything, he could imagine doing something as simple as grinding some ingredients or lighting candles, but when she held out the brush to him, he realized that she was asking for him to be intimately involved. His comparative inexperience would actually mean something.

“You sure?” he asked. “You said it’s fickle. I don’t want to screw anything up.”

She considered him for a moment before placing the paintbrush in his palm and closing his fingers around it. Her hand rested on his as she watched his face with a quiet almost-reverence. “Magic is about more than experience—yeah, I’ll be here Obi-Wanning your ass—but there’s a sincerity to it. Shit’s nuanced.” She hooked his arm, guiding him back to the table. Her hand swept over the table full of spell components as she explained, “We’re doing a temporal spell and a broad-based location spell mixed together, so we need all these run-of-the-mill odds and ends.” She tapped a few crystals and traced the edge of the map. Her voice nearly had the excitement of a child at show-and-tell, instilling a bit of enthusiasm in him that started overcoming his concern about not being good enough to help her. “But just as importantly, the spell reaches into the ribbon between the planes. I think the two of us working it together will give it some extra oomph.”

“Extra oomph?”

“A creature from Hell visiting Earth, and a creature from Earth who’s touched by Hell.” She raised an eyebrow at him while smiling slyly. “What better pair to poke around at the veil?”

There was something disarming about her mischievous grin. It brought a levity to what might otherwise feel like a daunting spell or a stark characterization of themselves. Instead, she had framed the task as something for them to share, a puzzle for them to work together. Whether it was wishful thinking, feeble rationalization, or a well-reasoned theory, he’d give it a shot. He nodded in agreement to her.

Ruby sat him down on the chair in front of the small table full of supplies. She draped her left arm around behind him as she leaned forward over his shoulder and led his right hand to dip the brush into a small clay bowl of ink. Holding her fingers around his, she gently guided him in painting the runes onto the map in question. She whispered into his ear an explanation of each symbol as they worked. The precious knowledge and the warm breath on his neck sent a ripple of pleasure through him. Every sentence was some new discovery. He could have listened to her for hours, the way she seamlessly interwove the history and theory—she really was a storyteller. When the runes were done, she laid his palm down on the design, then rested hers on top of his, lacing their fingers together. Her fingertips settled on the fresh runework, but the ink didn’t smudge.

“Do you want to feel me activate the spell?” she asked in almost a purr.

He’d never experienced the sensation of another person performing magic that wasn’t actually directed at him. It hadn’t even occurred to him that such a thing was possible. “Yeah, please.”

“Plant your feet flat on the floor.” She placed his free hand on his thigh, then explained, “Think of it like grounding yourself. The less stuff you’re making skin contact with the better.”

He didn’t like the comparison to carrying at electrical charge, though she didn’t seem too concerned. Granted, he couldn’t recall the last time Ruby had sweated the threat of grievous bodily injuries. “Is this dangerous? You sure I won’t mess this up?”

She leaned even further forward, then turned her head to look him in the eyes. Her face was so near to him that he expected her to kiss him, but she just smiled. She had an expression that somehow blended contentment, amusement, and admiration into a profoundly soothing gesture of reassurance.

“It’ll be fine. Don’t worry.” She softly kissed his cheek before whispering, “Just relax.”

She began softly speaking an incantation. Occasionally, she seemed to hesitate between words and for a moment he wondered if she was having trouble remembering the lines, but he slowly understood; she was improvising. He could feel an odd sensation at her touch. There was an almost cold quality forming along the surface of her hand, but it didn’t make him shiver. He was feeling the spell draining energy from the very world around them. When she briefly paused to carefully pick her wording, he could feel that energy contort and shift. It didn’t fully make sense to him, but he imagined her words reaching out and ensnaring something from the ether, taming it to her will. 

“When you cast a spell,” she whispered in his ear while maintaining the channeling of the spell with her right hand. “You’re just moving the pieces around in a puzzle. And if you’re calm and patient—“ She ran the fingers of her left hand up along his neck, into his hair. “—you can feel the magic itself, bowing at your touch.”

His lips were trembling as he could feel a strange subtle tugging all around him. It was as if the spell had created a sort of gravity well and was drawing the ethereal to it. In a very real way, he was feeling her power. She was sharing it with him. The intimacy and rush was unlike anything he’d experienced before.

Ruby softly asked, “Are you ready?”

“Yes,” he breathed back.

She whispered some word that he didn’t recognize or care to remember. As soon as it had left her lips, they were kissing. He’d completely lost track of everything around them, beyond the softness of her and the tingling cool prickling below their hands. When she lifted her hand off his, he hesitated, still in a slight daze.

“It’s done,” she told him. “Time to take a peek.”

He pulled back his hand and they examined the map. There was a very faint light blue fog hovering a millimeter above the illustrated town. For the most part the glow was barely noticeable, but there were splotches that turned more opaque and five several-block areas that visibly stood out.

“Five deaths?” he guessed, trying his best to interpret the results.

“Five places where something is entering or leaving the material plane. They don’t all have to be reapers,” she corrected. “I’m surprised we actually got such sharp results.”

“Sorry.” He cautiously pointed at the two dozen or so splotches that littered the map. “Looks like we had a little bit of interference or smudging, whatever it is.”

“Sam, that’s not white noise,” she said, causing him to look up at her face. That was the expression of someone about to deliver bad news. “Those are probably events farther ahead in time, maybe a week or two.”

He looked back down at the anomalously large number of interplanar events, any of which could signify someone’s death. “Oh.” He nodded while processing the new information. “Fuck.”


	4. Lessons & Limits

With a third attack due to occur in the next couple days, they decided to prepare weapons effective against the  camazotz as quickly as possible on the off chance they caught a lucky break. It wasn’t clear from the lore whether an angel blade would be effective against it. Several of the accounts of the camazotz made it sound more like a spirit or creature possessing mystical properties. Based on the dozens or hundreds of kills they’d landed over the years with an angel blade, it seemed like about a third of the things calling for an exotic blessed sword, or what-not, really were so persnickety about their means of death, rendering the angel blade useless. Sam had a small scar in the shape of a bite mark on his left buttcheek from the time he’d learned a Norse forest sprite was immune to the angelic weapon. They weren’t about to risk being caught in a similar situation.

He had nearly laughed when he learned the prescribed method for killing a camazotz. It required using a specially constructed wooden stake to stab it through the heart. Evidently, somewhere along the way the lore regarding vampires and vampire-bat monsters had become garbled in popular culture. Unfortunately, among other labor-intensive requirements, the stake needed to be made of birch heartwood, so the pair of them decided to take a trip to the largest lumber yard within a three-hour drive.

While they were on their way, Dean called to conduct one of their routine check-ins. Sam put him on speakerphone, since he was busy driving, then brought his brother up to speed on their case.

“You’re kidding me. A wooden stake?” the elder Winchester asked in disbelief. “You gonna break out the crosses and garlic too? Put an APB out on Bela Lugosi?”

Sam tilted his head to the side in acknowledgement even though Dean couldn’t see him before admitting, “This is kinda a weird one.”

“You can stake that son of a bitch and take a picture for the scrapbook.”

“That’s serial killer behavior.”

“That’s field-research-hunter behavior,” Dean replied.

Ruby interjected a fake cough. “Semantics.”

“Bite me,” Dean shot back over the phone.

Sam spotted her hold two fingers up to her mouth, miming fangs as she let out a little hiss. He rolled his eyes a bit at the gesture, but smiled at the playfully teasing.

“Anyway, it looks like the  camazotz hunt every few days, but they like to stick to one area for about a month at a time.” Sam told the phone. “We’re thinking we should hang around here for a little while. Based on a scrying spell we ran, we think there could be at least one more victim—hopefully not more.”

“Bag him fast.”

“We’re trying, but it’s hard when he drops off the map for a handful of days at a time,” Sam said in their defense. “During this between time, our leads are pretty weak. We’ve been chasing some possible threads, but so far we don’t have anything solid to show for it.”

“Okay. Well, it looks like our case is wrapped up here. We just need to go destroy three pagan idols,” Dean commented. “Please tell me you two are fine babysitting Dracula by yourselves. I just want to go home and not deal with viscera for a few days.”

“We’re good,” Sam answered, then thought better of all the ambient glowing on the planar rift detection spell. “If things start heating up, we’ll call you.”

“Do me a favor and kill the fucking thing before anything heats up. I just want to sleep for a day, then watch TV until I’ve forgotten how to walk.”

“Last I checked, you’ve got a backlog of ten episodes of Dr. Sexy on the DVR.”

“It’s called a ‘guilty pleasure,’” Dean replied indignantly. “We can’t all jerk off to the International Journal of Plant Sciences or whatever.”

Sam’s lip curled. “You jerk off to Dr. Sexy?”

“That’s-that’s not what—“ He audibly flustered for a second. “Guilty pleasure. Doesn’t have to do with sex.”

“Be proud of your hobbies. You are who you are.”

“Bitch,” Dean told Sam.

Sam spotted Ruby roll her eyes at that particular teasing. For years Dean has called her a bitch with sincere hostility in his voice. It was understandable that she would find the common sign-off agitating. He quickly replied, “Jerk,” before hanging up. Glancing back at Ruby, he told her, “Sorry about Dean saying ‘bitch’ so much.”

She shrugged, not-entirely consoled by the acknowledgement of her potentially-hurt feelings. “He’s got this whole painfully-butch thing going. No big shock that that’s one of his go-to’s.” She idly fiddled with the bottom hem of her t-shirt. “Does it bug you? When he calls you a bitch?”

“It used to,” he admitted.  Throughout high school and for a while after returning to hunting the nickname had carried some unintentional hurt. Dean didn’t know that he was asexual—how could someone like him ever have guessed something like that—but knowing that Dean’s well-meaning jabs were thrown blindly didn’t stop them from striking a nerve. It had taken seeing that kind of terminology being used on an angel of the Lord and a demon from Hell for Sam to realize that his older brother’s vernacular was more self-commentary than anything else. “Now, at least when it’s a call-and-response, I know it isn’t meant to be an insult . To him, it’s something lighthearted or like the good old days. To me, it’s just… I don’t know.”

“Well, allow me to take that word back for us .” Ruby plugged in their iPod to the auxiliary jack, then started playing "Bitch" by Meredith Brooks.

The song was straight out of his early teenage years—well, the alternative rock, female ballad wasn’t exactly in his dad’s rotation, so the song struck Sam’s nostalgia for listening to his discman during middle school. To his amusement, Ruby unabashedly began singing along to it. Dean never would’ve been caught even humming the tune, but she didn’t care about dignity. The way her head bobbed to the music, the delight on her face, her levity— His affection flared.

When the chorus came around, Sam joined her:

_ “I'm a bitch, I'm a lover _ __   
_ I'm a child, I'm a mother _ __   
_ I'm a sinner, I'm a saint _ __   
_ I do not feel ashamed _ __   
_ I'm your hell, I'm your dream _ __   
_ I'm nothing in between _ _   
_ __ You know you wouldn't want it any other way.”

* * *

Their five-hour round trip to the lumber yard was one of those parts of the job that were always glossed over in the epic, often-intoxicated telling of hunts at hunter gatherings—not that Sam was likely to recount any stories involving his demonic girlfriend at the next social gathering he was dragged to. The lumber yard was a disorganized pigsty, entirely located in direct sunlight, and it was an all-around miserable experience. When they did find a pile of birch that contained some scraps of heartwood, Sam had been disappointed to discover a prairie rattlesnake taking shelter in the shade of the planks. 

Completely-fucking-done with the errand, Ruby proceeded to pick through the wood while pointedly ignoring the snake repeatedly biting her left calf. Sam had insisted on driving back, explaining that he wasn’t entirely comfortable with someone who had just received enough venom to kill an elephant operating heavy machinery. To his amusement, the thing that had actually made her hiss in pain was getting a splinter while tossing the couple pieces of wood into the trunk.

When they got back to the motel, she finally conceded to lying down until she was less poisoned. In return for her… not-exactly-noble sacrifice, he went to fetch some dinner for them. By the time she’d finished her burger and sweet potato fries, Ruby was ready to tackle the next hurdle: figuring out how to make that particular type of stake. According to the available online sources, the stake needed to have specific Mayan glyphs carved or burnt into it. A little googling later, Ruby teleported off to raid the academic libraries of the top five experts of Central American linguistics. While she was off on her field trip, Sam took the single piece of birth heartwood large enough to accommodate the glyphs and started whittling a stake.

A few hours later, Ruby returned with her arms full of thick hardback books. She looked fairly tapped out from the amount of demonic energy she’d just exerted, but didn’t complain. It seemed likely that she’d been largely grounded for a while, but at least there was something to show for her effort. She deposited the books onto the table as Sam eagerly hurried over to begin picking through the haul. There were over a dozen promising resources.

“I took pictures of the spines of all the books I didn’t pilfer, in case we strike out on these, but this seemed like a good starting place.”

The clever move brought a content smile to his lips. If all else failed, they’d be able to search for specific titles rather than broad topics. That sort of resourcefulness was the type of thing that he’d always admired about her, but now that their relationship had grown into something more, he wasn’t as dismissive of those feelings.

“These look great,” he agreed and assured her, while picking up an extra thick book. He took a seat at the table, making himself comfortable for an extended stay.

“A certain amount of the credit should really go to the experts, who curated the larger collection. I’m just good at picking the really delectable from the adequately ripe.”

“The discerning eye of an expert thief.”

She sat down in the chair across from him. From below the table, her hand lifted a book that she’d somehow grabbed from the pile without him noticing. “A master thief,” she corrected.

For the briefest moment the cheesy reply of, ‘So that’s how you stole my heart,’ entered his mind, but he didn’t seriously consider saying it. That was the sort of corny, sentimental thing that would either get him laughed at or make Ruby recoil. Anyway, they weren’t anywhere near such a fluffy interaction. They liked each other and were interested in more, but anything that even remotely had to do with something like love was too far afield to risk mentioning. Instead, he simply gave her an awkward smile before starting to read the first book.

After an hour of quietly researching together, Sam looked up to see that a lock of hair had fallen in front of Ruby’s face, but she was too consumed by her reading to move it. Gingerly, he reached out and tucked it behind her ear. Her dark eyes flicked up at the tender act. Instead of pulling back, she leaned into his gentle touch. His thumb caressed her cheek and she gave the inside of his wrist a small kiss in return. When he lowered his arm back down to rest on the table, she laid her arm next to his. As they researched, every once in a while they would take turns dragging their fingertips along each other’s skin. At one touch—his fingers glided down the soft, sensitive flesh on the inside of her arm—he spotted her other hand grip the edge of the book she was reading. Glancing up, he noticed her subtly biting her lower lip as she closed her eyes.

“Are you okay?”

“Very.” She looked up at him. Her usual snarkiness was absent from her face.  He could see her processing thoughts or feelings. She’d felt something, a desire: lust or affection. He wasn’t sure and she didn’t immediately volunteer an answer.

He thought about asking her questions or trying to discuss what was happening between them, but there was something profound about the silence.  They were unrushed. On some level, he felt that they were on the same page. Maybe they didn’t know what page that was, but for whatever reason that didn’t bother him. Scientists or philosophers that they were, be damned; dissecting the moment, breaking the peace with questions, it wasn’t right. Instead, he gently squeezed her arm as he went back to reading. She returned the comforting act, then used her free hand to flip to the next page.

* * *

Ruby closed the book she was reading and stood up. As she stretched she told Sam, “I love books as much as the next pathetic nerd, but if I spend another minute reading case studies of inhuman paralysis in the eighteenth century, I will seriously go on a killing spree that puts our bat boy to shame.”

Sam looked up at her. He had to admit that his eyes were starting to go blurry too. They’d been at it for nearly five hours already that day.

“Yeah. A break would be nice.” His lower back was starting to ache from sitting so long in a chair designed for a person with much shorter legs. “Maybe we can go talk to the local club owners or retracing the victim’s last 24 hours?”

“I was thinking something more fun. Sometimes a girl just needs to rampage a little.”

“Compromise: destroy something in a controlled environment?”

She stared at him skeptically, but said, “You have my attention.”

They decided to go to the local firing range to do some target practice. It wasn’t uncommon for them to go to a range while away from the bunker as part of their training. For Sam, it was simply maintaining his current skill level, but Ruby actually needed the practice. Up until recently, her main combat style involved teleporting up behind someone and stabbing them in the back, or melee in general. But since teaming up with two hunters and losing her connection with Hell, she had drastically reduced her reliance on teleportation. Not only did it tap out her finite resource, teleporting was one of the types of demonic abilities that created omens. While they could afford the occasional blip on the radar, some hunter was bound to notice if demonic omens followed the Winchesters around wherever they went. So, over the last few months, she had started practicing with a pistol.

“You know, we have a whole fucking arsenal in the trunk,” Ruby commented on the drive to the range. “We could just go find some empty plot of land outside of town, shoot some cans and make a crater.”

“One too many times that didn’t work out well,” Sam replied.

“Pray tell.”

“A few years back, we quickly lost our credibility as feds when Dean got caught firing a grenade launcher for kicks.”

She nodded, thoroughly impressed. “What a way to blow a cover. You get the cops called on you?”

Sam shrugged. “Bobby said someone called it into the regional office. I don’t know exactly what happened. We got out of there fast. That’s why we don’t work in Arizona.”

“I always assumed it was the heat.”

“Arizona has the most outstanding warrants.” Sam furrowed his brow for a moment, then corrected, “Actually, I think Florida might be the most.”

“I don’t know. An arrest warrant based on a grenade launcher is pretty outstanding,” she joked, earning a smile.

When they got to the range, they claimed a firing station to share, then he sat back and let her do her thing. He admired the way she held the weapon—not because of some visible proficiency. She held it like a confident, intelligent woman, who’d been given a puzzle. Her body seemed almost relaxed enough, but it lacked the desired muscle memory. He could almost see her making tiny corrections every three shots, attempting to improve based on reason and scientific method alone. It was incredibly endearing, watching her process in real time. In the past, he might’ve just let her go, learning at her own speed, but now, he wanted to help her. He wasn’t as scared of insulting her ability, or fearful about interacting with her so closely. She’d given him the experience of casting a spell together; he could at least share some of his tips with her.

“May I?” he asked between rounds of fire, then gestured at the way she was holding the pistol. 

When she began to safety and hand him the weapon, instead of taking it from her, he closed his fingers over hers, reseating them on the grip. Sam lifted her arm, temporarily letting it hang in the air, aimed at the target, before moving to realigned her posture. He positioned himself immediately behind her, then placed his hands on her hips. 

“In the field, you’ll probably be leading with your dominant side,” he told her as he gently shifted her right side forward a bit. His stomach knotted a bit at the intimate touch, but she let out a small hum of appreciation—either at the advice or the closeness. Taking the invitation, his hands moved up her body, making tiny adjustments and lightly caressing her throughout their journey. 

A week ago, he wouldn’t have dreamed of touching her like that. He would’ve been scared of her being offended, or possibly worse, having it set an expectation that he couldn’t meet. It was a nice change of pace. He leaned down, nearly resting his head on her right shoulder as he looked down the length of her extended arm. Lightly gripping her hand and the gun, he rotated her wrist a few degrees.

In a quiet voice, he explained, “To help with the recoil.” His left hand settled on her diaphragm, then he whispered, “You fire on the exhale, so be sure to breathe.”

Sam took a deep breath to demonstrate. He felt her chest start to move in and out at his instruction. They stood there, perfectly still and silent for a long while, until her breathing had stabilized to match his own. She turned her head, meeting his eyes only a couple inches apart.

“Can you feel the difference?” he asked.

“Oh, I can definitely feel it,” she replied before wetting her lips.

He was just about to lean in to kiss her, when a man two stations over shouted, “Teaching your girlfriend to shoot?”

Sam groaned in frustration at the interruption, then whispered, “Please don’t shoot him,” to Ruby before telling the man, “Trust me. Between the two of us, she’s the more dangerous one.”

Ruby pulled out her fake FBI badge from her jacket pocket, then dryly said, “My supervisor says that fewer of my kills should be stranglings.”

The man chuckled for a moment, but when she just stared back at him flatly his laugh turned noticeably nervous. Sam patted her shoulder, then gave a meek smile. To their shared delight, the man quickly packed up his pistol and left.

When the two of them were alone again, she looked up at him. “Is the moment dead?”

“Just a flesh wound,” he assured her, complete with a kiss.

* * *

On the sixth day, Sam was lying on his bed, reading a book of Central American carnivorous monsters. Ruby was sitting cross-legged on her bed while repairing a busted seam in one of her pairs of pants. They both routinely patched their clothes after combat, but her inhuman strength and flexibility occasionally resulted in a split seam while doing mundane things, like pushing an obnoxious neighbor’s car into a red zone so that it would get towed. As she sewed, every few minutes, she glanced out the window, eager to see the fruits of her labor.

“Hey,” he said to catch her attention, then gestured for her to come over. “Check this out.”

She finished her stitch, put down her project, and walked over to the bed. After kicking off her shoes, she sat down before deciding to recline next to him so that she could see what he was looking at. She wiggled closer to get a better view of the book, leaving them sharing his pillow.

He briefly wondered if the room suddenly getting a bit warmer meant that he was blushing, but he pushed the thought from his mind and showed her the hand-drawn diagram in the book.

“It looks like a meal schedule for camazotz,” he explained, then started pointing to the various rows and columns. “Depending on the maturity and sex, they eat at different rates—and obviously we need to factor in the size of the victims, but we might be able to get a better sense of the perp.”

“These things are sounding less like spirits and more like flesh and blood,” she noted, then looked over the maturity column for the males. “Fully grown adults go about a day longer than the frat bats.”

“I know it’s a small lead to go off of—” he started to apologize, but stopped when she rolled onto her side to look at him.

They were lying on the bed, only a couple inches apart. He could feel the heat from her body, or maybe he really was blushing. His eyes reflexively flicked away from hers in a bashful move, but after taking a second to calm his nerves, he looked back at her.

She gave him a peaceful smile of reassurance before telling him, “It’s a lead we didn’t have before.”

Sam was about to return the smile, when he saw a tow truck drive by the motel room window. He couldn’t help but chuckle, causing Ruby to peek back over her shoulder to see what was going on. She started laughing with almost childlike glee that made him feel incredible. Spurred on by each other’s amusement, they snickered, rolling slightly in the process. She moved closer to him and his arm wrapped around her, holding her. Their foreheads touched as the giggling faded

He leaned in slightly to give her a kiss. She returned the kiss and became a little more animated than usual. Her leg shifted, interweaving with his. His hand slid down to rest on her waist, and he didn’t dare pull her closer to him, but in her excitement she moved forward. Their thighs were intertwined. Her left leg hooked his right, pressing their crotches together. They both were wearing jeans, but he could feel the heat from her crotch as she unconsciously ground against him. He suddenly felt flush and his pulse began rising, but not for the right reason. His body turned rigid in her embrace, stopping her dead.

“Shit,” she exhaled as she pulled back from him, realizing that something had gone wrong.

He felt embarrassed and ashamed. Part of him wanted to grab her, pulling her back to him, but he hesitated. As much as that impulse was motivated by his genuine concern for her, he could also feel his guilt in it. Trying to keep going and pretending that he was fine would be a lie. She was smart enough to know it. And he wouldn’t insult what they were trying to build by attempting it. They’d found a boundary.

With all the feelings swirling inside of him, all he could manage was to whisper, “I’m sorry—”

“You didn’t—I guess I crossed a line.” Her voice had an abrupt edge to it, but she didn’t sound angry or offended. If anything she was distracted and a bit inconvenienced. Her nipples were hard below her cotton t-shirt and her cheeks were rosy. She got up from the bed, then told him, “I’m gonna go take a shower. While I’m doing that, figure out if me touching you with my crotch was the problem or if it was me touching your crotch with my thigh—or both or whatever, okay?”

He was a little thrown by her giving him an assignment instead of complaining about what had just happened between them. “What?”

“You’re an investigator who loves science. Come up with a hypothesis,” she explained. “I’m not getting blue balls and having nothing to show for it.”

She slipped into the bathroom and shut the door before he could reply, “You don’t have balls.” His brow furrowed slightly as he mentally checked if he actually had any basis for that claim, then sighed.

He didn’t fully understand why she hadn’t been more offended or upset at him. Rationally, she had known there would be limits to their physical relationship going into this, but that had all been theory up until two minutes ago. And in practice people were almost never so reasonable. 

He chewed his lower lip at her request for him to self-analyze. She’d seemed frustrated—understandably so—but not at him. Her ire had been aimed at circumstances and in response she’d chosen pragmatism. Maybe she’d delegated the actual effort to him, but it wasn’t like she was about to tell him what he was comfortable with. Left to his own devices, he probably would’ve been too ashamed by letting her down to really face the uncomfortable memory head-on. Suddenly, Ruby’s lack of shame had come in pretty handy. 

A little moan carried over the sound of the shower, making him turn his head to stare at the dividing wall. She was masturbating in there. The thought that she was aroused by him turned him on a bit. He didn’t have any interest in opening the bathroom door and doing anything about their mutual desire, but the thought that, in some way, he could make her feel that pleasure….

He grabbed the spare pillow and hugged it to his chest. Everything was so fucking complicated—not bad. Things between them seemed like they were fine, even if he had no idea how he was lucky enough that that was the case. It felt like he was barely hanging onto the first sincere relationship of his life by the skin of his teeth.

“God, you’re pathetic,” he whispered to himself, testing the sentiment out loud. That wasn’t right. Maybe he was a bit of a mess at the moment, but he was at least self aware enough to immediately correct himself; he was insecure and scared from all the times he’d been hurt before. That wasn’t pathetic. It was understandable. He took a deep breath in an attempt to calm down as he reminded himself that there had to be something about him that Ruby felt was worth accommodating his orientation. If he wanted to meet her halfway, that meant being comfortable enough with himself that he could be honest with her. 

He closed his eyes and tried to remember the details of what had happened: the contact, his feelings, what had been enjoyable and when it had gone wrong. As he thought about it, his guilt occasionally flared but he forced himself to keep going. He wanted to give her something, even if it was just a hypothesis.

When she came out of the bathroom ten minutes later, she was fully dressed, damp hair dangling around her blushing cheeks. Instead of joining him on the bed, where he was seated, she perched on the corner of the dresser. He couldn’t tell if her giving him that distance was for his benefit or hers, but at least she gave him a small smile of reassurance. 

Unsure how to eloquently start the conversation, he blurted out, “I think both things were a problem. I definitely wasn’t into you touching my dick. And you grinding against me….” He pursed his lips, bracing himself for potentially insulting or disappointing her. “I didn’t like your crotch being right on me.”

She nodded to herself for a moment, then sucked her teeth and said, “Okay. No genital touching. I just masturbated in the shower. Does that gross you out?”

“It’s not gross. I’m-I’m happy you’re happy—I mean, you know.” He shifted. “You can do your thing apart from me. I just don’t… I don’t want to have you do anything using part of me for it.” Sam felt embarrassed. He hated the idea that he was placing so many rules between them. In a quiet voice he said, “I’m sorry.”

Ruby walked over and sat down beside him. When he didn’t turn to meet her eyes, she touched his chin and guided him to look at her. “Listen, I’m not cool with rape. This doesn’t work if you aren’t comfortable.” She waited a beat, then told him, “It’s complicated, but it’s not your fault, so don’t apologize.”

He reached up, cupping her cheek with his hand and rested his forehead against hers. His throat was tight with emotion, leaving him unable to speak. He clenched his eyes as he nodded, wordlessly acknowledging her reassurance. Despite his best efforts to keep himself together, a single tear escaped him, quickly tracing down his face. Being told that their relationship’s eccentricities wasn’t his fault was one of those things that he’d never known he’d needed to hear. He sat there, completely shaken by her words.

She wrapped her arms around him and whispered, “It’s okay.”


	5. Visions

_ There was a flickering image of an elderly man kneeling beside a twin bed covered in a shabby quilt. The colors of the fabric squares seemed to bleed into each other, but it wasn’t from the dye. Every hue in the room blurred slightly beyond the edges of their objects—though around the man there was an oppressive shadow. He prayed aloud, asking for forgiveness of his sins and easier days ahead. For a moment, Sam expected to see some monster emerge from a dark corner of the room, but it wasn’t anything so exceptional. The old man gripped his chest with one hand, then tried to grab onto the bed to stop himself from falling over. He pulled the kaleidoscopic quilt from the bed, covering himself in the process. With his dying act, his hand slid under the bed, past a hunter’s emergency kit, then groped around the bed frame—probably checking for a hex bag. _

Sam woke up and immediately rolled onto his side, clutching his head in pain. He gasped for air, having unconsciously held his breath, like so many dream-visions before.  It wasn’t clear whether he did that out of anticipation or fear. The old man's death didn’t seem to be related to any active cases he knew about, which meant that when he was feeling better, he would call Bobby to see if he knew who the old-timer might be. If so, maybe someone could be sent out on a welfare check and help figure out if there was any foul play—and, if so, how to prevent it . But first, Sam’s head needed to stop spinning.

From the other side of the room, Ruby asked, “You okay?”

He quietly replied, “Vision.”

She put down her book before taking off her jeans and bra so that she was only wearing a black cotton t-shirt and her panties. After approaching his bed she waited a beat to see if he would tell her to stop, then she climbed under the blanket. She snuggled up next to him from behind, almost spooning him, though she made sure to keep some distance between their crotches. He was a little nervous after having earlier found a limit of his comfort, but once he realized that she was respecting his boundaries, her presence was surprisingly calming. Having her there with him was grounding in a way that he wasn’t used to. He let her hold him and treasured the tangible reminder that he wasn’t alone.

They lay there together for several minutes until much of the tension in his body had eased, then in a soft voice she asked, “What are your visions like?”

The question struck him; no one had ever asked him that before. Everyone had wanted to know the substance of his visions, but that was the end of the inquiry. They’d only been interested to the extent that the information was actionable. No one had ever cared about the experience, what it meant to him. Dean clearly didn’t like the fact that it would cause a headache, but, for whatever reason, he had never brought it up. Maybe the supernatural nature of the visions was enough to place it into the same category as an emotionally-charged trigger, the sort of things that the brothers almost never willingly discussed. Despite the general acceptance that Dean had for his slight-demonic affinity, the visions were a manifestation of that and not necessarily an appropriate topic for polite society.

“Honestly….” He pursed his lips, hesitant to confess—yes, it was a confession; he was ashamed for some reason. “They scare the hell out of me. I’m just living my life and at any point there can be this thing. Suddenly, sometimes, it’s hard to see. Sometimes I don’t know where I am or what’s real.”

In an oddly non-judgmental tone, she asked, “You lose your grip?”

He tilted his head to the side a bit at the guess. Even if there didn’t seem to be any long-term effect on his mental health, it wasn’t entirely wrong. From time to time it could be fairly said that he wasn’t all there. Maybe it only lasted for a second or two at a time while he was awake, but it was still upsetting when he actually thought about it. “It’s confusing. Sometimes it plays out like a movie, something I’m watching from afar. Other times I can smell scents or feel textures. Once a guy in the vision was drunk and I felt woozy. The visions sometimes bleed like that in weird ways.”

“You can feel them?”

Sam nodded as he fought past some shame to whisper, “And it hurts. It feels like….” He was struggling to describe the sensation. “Like an ice-cold hand made of blades is gripping my brain from behind. The fingers cut— And then it’s holding me underwater.” After letting out a long sigh he continued. “It usually fades within a half hour, but it still takes a lot out of me. I only call them migraines because that’s something Dean can at least google and understand.”

She leaned in closer, then exhaled warm, soothing breath on the back of his neck and skull. “How often does it happen?”

“A few times a week.”

He could feel her body tense a bit at the startling discovery. “You don’t really react to it. I mean, I didn’t know it was that bad.”

“I’m used to it,” he said, then added, “And they vary a bit in intensity.”

She lay there quietly for a moment, caught in thought, spooning him. “What if we could find a way to stop them?”

“Ruby, I….” He almost felt sorry for her. She clearly wanted to help him, but he didn’t even know where to begin. “I can’t. They’re helpful sometimes—“

“They fuck you up and put you in danger.” She propped herself up on an elbow so that she could look him in the eyes. “How many hunters know you’re a psychic?”

“It’s not like I go teaming up with random hunters anymore.” He took her hand in his. “Any day of the week, I’d rather have you.”

Her face scrunched up as she skeptically said, “Why are you turning this into the climax of a shitty rom-com when I’m trying to make a point?”

Despite the fading headache, he made his best attempt at a puppy-dog face. “Because I come from a troubled background and can only handle one major life change at a time.”

She narrowed her eyes at his ploy, though he suspected she was susceptible to his cute expression. With a shake of her head, she dropped back down to the pillow and resumed spooning him. “I swear to God, you Winchesters have the self-preservation instincts of a fucking cherry.”

* * *

On the ninth day, Sam found a website that made it even less clear whether they were dealing with a magical being or a more animalistic creature. Apparently, at least at one point, humans offered cattle sacrifices to the camazotz during full moons. Despite that, there were a few accounts of camazotz ignoring the offerings and ravaging villages instead. That kind of behavior was hard to reconcile with something akin to a spirit.

“It says that it was incredibly rare to see more than one camazotz around at a single time, except during certain holidays based on the lunar calendar,” he explained.

Ruby raised an unenthusiastic eyebrow at him from across the table. “Tell me Giant Bat Thanksgiving isn’t coming up.”

He scrolled through the webpage a bit more. “I don’t see a list of their holidays. It says there’s some overlap with the Aemek calendar. I have no idea if that’s easier to find. I’ve never heard of it.”

She jotted down the next piece to investigate as she muttered, “I wished we’d get some answers that didn’t make more questions.”

“Most of those are called dead ends.”

“And we only need one that isn’t in order to catch a real break.” She consulted the calendar on her phone, then commented, “Well, with this body count and spread, it looks like we aren’t dealing with a Bat Mitzvah.” Ruby grinned at her own joke, then said, “So we’re looking for a lone bat boy—a bat-chelor.”

“Oh my god. Please stop,” Sam groaned. “You’re worse than Dean.”

She relented, but after only a few minutes, she reached out, gesturing for the laptop. “Give it here. I want to check something.”

He bookmarked the page he was on, then handed it to her. While she was exploring whichever thought she’d stumbled upon, he rechecked the calendar and feeding table. There would almost certainly be another victim before too long and they barely had leads. Their perp was male, with an unknown physical description, who probably knew about history. In their desperation, the two of them had been staking out clubs every other night, but so far they hadn’t found anything definitive. He’d even told Bobby with the hope being that someone would’ve heard of a camazotz, and yet nothing helpful had come through so far.

“Huh,” Ruby said while staring at the laptop screen.

He glanced up, hoping for a lucky break. “Find something?”

“Nothing useful,” she replied apologetically. “Idea didn’t pan out.” 

“What was the ‘huh’ then?”

“Did you know that guy bats have a little dick and balls, just right out there, dangling upside down above their heads?” She flipped the laptop around so that he could see the picture. “I mean seriously, it’s like, ‘My eyes are down here.’”

He blinked a few times before asking, “Why am I looking at a tiny penis?”

“Thought I’d refresh my memory on bat facts and stumbled across this gem,” she replied while turning the laptop back to face her.

“Alright.” Sam tossed the book he was reading onto the pile, then stood up. “I’m taking a break before you find bat porn.” 

He stretched a bit, before heading into the bathroom for some personal grooming. After brushing his teeth and shaving, he took a nice long shower. He didn’t bother masturbating; as pleased as he was with how things were going with Ruby, he was content to just let the water pour over him. When his mind was cleared and his muscles were relaxed, he finally stepped out and wrapped a towel around his waist. 

Rather than getting back into his used clothes, he exited the bathroom to grab a fresh pair of boxers and pajama pants. Ruby was lounging on her bed, reading a book. She looked up and chewed her lower lip, eyes scanning his body. He could see her fingers clench the book as she subtly blushed. The sight of him must’ve been arousing to her.

“You want me to take the towel off before you burn a hole in it with your eyes?” he asked.

“Fuck yes.”

He’d been joking, but her eager reply made him actually consider it. Earlier in their relationship he had worried that her sexual attraction to him would grow to overwhelm his boundaries. Now, having seen the care with which Ruby was treating his limits, he wasn’t as wary of her lust. He had no interest in playing with her himself, but he didn’t mind providing her some inspiration.

After the smallest moment of hesitation, Sam unwrapped the towel and dropped it to the floor. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been naked in front of someone without feeling like he was about to be eaten. It was oddly liberating, to be appreciated and yet not be vulnerable. He gave her a smile, then went back to his normal business. Instead of promptly getting dressed, he picked up one of their research books and began reading it. He opted to do his research for a bit while standing so that she could see his full body, unhindered by the poor posture of sitting at the table.

Ruby’s mouth fell open ever so slightly as she stared at him. Whatever mild pinkness had been in her cheeks has turned to a full blush. Her thighs pressed together as she writhed subtly. She chewed her lower lip for a moment before asking, “Can I…?” as she slid her hand over her jeans, between her thighs.

She wanted to masturbate, then and there. The thought that she was so attracted to him was flattering, even if he wasn’t equally aroused by it. 

“Yeah.” He shifted, unsure what to do. “Should I leave you—“

“Stay—if that’s okay?” she asked. “Even there.”

Sam had never participated in something like that before, but he was about ten feet from her and didn’t feel particularly anxious. It wasn’t the kind of thing he’d ever expected to do, and yet, if it made her happy without hurting him, he was willing to try it. He swallowed some of his butterflies before nodding his consent from the far side of the room. “Go ahead.”

She began undoing her pants, then pushed down her jeans and panties. Without taking her eyes off him, she slid her fingers between her legs. He couldn’t see much, which was fine with him, but he still watched for a moment as her hand rocked back and forth every so gently.

He didn’t begrudge her in the slightest for her own sexual desires; he just wasn’t particularly interested in doing anything himself. But if he could give her some pleasure by merely letting her see him, that wasn’t so bad. He made something of a show of researching, slowly pacing the room while reading and subtly flexing every few seconds, glancing up occasionally to check on her. When their eyes met her nimble fingers caressed her even faster and she seemed to lose herself all the more to the moment. Seeing the look of pure bliss on her face as she came, it made him sincerely happy that she could find that with him, in a way that was comfortable to both of them.

“God, Sam,” Ruby groaned as she sprawled on the bed. “You’re gonna be the death of me.”

* * *

_ The scene was undersaturated with shadows that seemed to reach up, obscuring so many important details. There was a woman with light umber skin and long black hair, wearing a fitted, short blue dress that popped against the nearly-monochromatic setting. A man was guiding her by the hand to a parking lot. He had dark hair and clothes, but Sam couldn’t make out his face. The couple kissed passionately as they leaned against the side of a brick building. The man’s tongue slid into her mouth and Sam could almost instantly sense the neurotoxin taking hold. Not only did the woman’s eyes dilate, the entire scene flared with light. The effect was jarring, painting every surface in high contrast black and white. Everything spun around the woman as she started to go limp. _

_ The image cut to a room that was largely shadows except for a few searing streaks of moonlight coming through the window blinds. There was a man—Sam recognized his silhouette as the  _ _ camazotz—carrying _ _ the limp woman into the room and tossing her onto a queen bed. She let out a small cry that was muffled by her numb lips. _

_ Another woman, entirely nude with porcelain skin and blonde hair, walked out of the en suite bathroom. She dragged her talon-like fingernails along the victim’s leg, causing brilliant red drops to well up as she tore the stockings. Her lips curled while she licked the trace amounts of blood from her claws. The man, still painted in shadows, embraced his partner from behind, nibbling her neck, but didn’t dare break the skin. _

_ “For you,” he whispered. _

_ The female turned around and started doing something to the male’s torso that Sam couldn’t make out, until she used his belt to tightly cinch a tourniquet around the victim’s leg, just above the scratches. Her tongue slid out of her mouth like a snake, stretching nearly eight inches long before unfurling outward to the sides, revealing dozens of razor-sharp barbs.  _

_ Everything in the scene seemed to splinter as she took a lick along the cuts. For a moment, Sam couldn’t understand what was happening, but the slow realization crept into his mind. If the neurotoxin was affecting the lightning and color that he was perceiving, then the jarring effect was also from the victim—It was pain. The toxin didn’t do anything to dull the agony of the victims. _

_ The female camazotz tore open the woman’s flesh and greedily lapped up all the blood from that leg. When she was done, she beckoned her partner over to her. He took off his shirt, then slid off his pants and underwear. _

_ Sam was having trouble understanding what was happening. The images kept jumping around, with gaps in time. It was like a bad trip. The drugs, blood loss, and pain was distorting the scene to the point that it was hard to make out what was going on at times, but he fought to understand what was happening, hoping that in the silhouettes and highlights, he might be able to make out the details of the killer’s face. _

_ The male climbed onto the bed, then grunted a few times, before moving down his partner’s body. He spread her legs and eagerly licked her clit. His long tongue slipped inside of her, earning a moan of pleasure. _

_ Suddenly the camazotz had swapped positions. The female was on top of him. Her tongue coiled around the shaft of his dick twice before she leaned forward, taking him into her mouth. He snapped his teeth and groaned. For a moment, Sam thought that the guy had come, but the male abruptly stopped the blow job.  _

_ He got up, flipped his partner around, pinning her to the headboard, then started fucking her hard against it—each thrust making his six-inch-long tail whip from side to side. They hardly seemed to notice the drugged  _ _ woman lying beside them as her leg slowly died from lack of circulation. _ _ At one point the camazotz female’s arm buckled, and she only stopped herself from collapsing to the side by pushing off of the victim’s face. _

_ The male reached up and held his partner’s wrists down as he fucked her from behind. He licked the back of her neck, then pressed his nose into her hair and he snapped his teeth once more. The female let out half a dozen chirping sounds as her head fell back, completely spent. Her nipples were hard as her chest heaved. _

_ When he was done, he told her, “Be sure to finish your snack and save your strength.” _

* * *

As soon as Sam woke up, he rolled onto his side and threw up into the wastebasket beside the bed.

“Jesus!” Ruby exclaimed as she got up from the table where she’d been working and hurried over to him. “What the fuck happened?”

“Vision,” he groaned while clutching his head. “A  camazotz, he drugged a vic. I caught some of the effect.”

“Did you get like proximately dosed?” she asked uncertainly.

“No. Just dizzy.” He shifted onto his back and covered his eyes. On top of the normal pain, it felt like the room was spinning. Even with his eyes shut, there was an odd sinking sensation that moved around him like he was spiralling down a drain. For a moment, he thought he might vomit again, but things gradually started to stabilize. “FYI, that stuff can be pretty fast-acting.”

Ruby rested one hand on his shoulder and checked his pulse with the other. “Take a couple minutes to pull yourself together, then go brush your teeth or take a shower. Anything I can get for you?”

“Caffeine,” he muttered. “It’s gonna be a long night.”

By the time Sam got out of the shower, Ruby had returned from fetching them four cups of coffee from a nearby donut shot. He sat down at the table and sipped his coffee while rubbing his face in an attempt to focus his mind. For the most part he remembered the vision as being the two  camazotz  having sex. It had been less than thrilling to witness. Aside from the helplessness involved in watching the next victim being essentially tortured prior to death, the whole thing had been so invasive and essentially pornographic.

Unlike some asexual people, he didn’t enjoy watching porn. He could find people attractive, but he had always found the beauty in the personality and identity of the subject. Ruby was smart, considerate, funny, resourceful—and while he didn’t want to do anything sexual with her body, the thought of  _ her _ was arousing. But he didn’t know the camazotz beyond seeing the damage they’ve inflicted on their victims. There was nothing redeeming or attractive about them that he could see, so to endure seeing them fucking like that…. It was one of the last things he’d want to witness.

After getting an entire cup of coffee into his system, Sam dropped the bombshell. “There was a second camazotz, a female.”

She stared at him for a moment. “Two camazotz?”

“Yeah.”

Ruby opened her mouth to ask a question, then tilted her head a few degrees to one side. “It’s been like eleven days. If we have two bats, how come we don’t have more— Fuck.” She dug through the pile of books and notes on the table between them, then pulled out the map that they’d used to look for potential deaths. The spell was no longer active, but he took her meaning. “Are we missing bodies?”

“That was an awfully lot of maybe-dead people on that map,” he agreed.

“We need to be looking for missing persons, and all sexes are back on the table.”

Sam nodded at her suggestion. They needed to rethink their case. It wasn’t just a matter of finding a lone predator, opportunistically picking up prey. The guy was hunting for a partner, probably killing almost twice the number of victims that they’d been anticipating. The fact that there weren’t more bodies in the morgue meant that at least some care was being taken with discarding the to-go meals. But why wasn’t the female hunting for herself?

“He told her to save her strength,” he mused.

“Maybe she’s injured or ill?”

“I didn’t see any signs of injury.” He glanced over at the bed, then told her. “They had sex, or they’re about to. I saw it.”

Ruby’s eyes widened and she nearly spat out a sip of coffee. “You got to watch bat-monster skinemax?”

He muttered, “Not really how I wanted to spend my night.”

“Some gifts are wasted on you.”

“Apparently so.”

* * *

After notifying the police that there might be more victims already out there, the town’s gossip network switched into full gear. It only took thirty-six hours  of frustratingly fruitless research before four more missing persons had been reported, though thankfully no fresh bodies had been discovered. The window for the disappearances covered almost two weeks. One of the possible victims worked from home and was only missed when a neighbor noticed the newspapers piling up. Another was an honor roll student at the local college with no close social ties, who had a surprising string of absences. Each disappearance had been overlooked until the rumor of a serial killer on the loose had spread.

Sam and Ruby both stared at the calendar, plotting the murders and the dates that the others went missing. They annotated the various demographics of all the known victims, and concluded that the camazotz didn’t actually mind eating members of the same sex. The lore just might’ve been conflating the predominance of heteronormative relationships, and the ease with which that allowed the camazotz to deliver a toxin kiss, with an actual trait of the species. With everything laid out, they could guess that the female had stopped hunting four days earlier, but the male had picked up the slack. Unfortunately, things weren’t adding up perfectly.

“I don’t understand it,” Sam sighed. “That’s too many victims for two camazotz. Do we have three?”

“They’re supposed to be solitary. The fact you saw two is weird.” Ruby gestured at a stack of three leather-bound books. “I’ve checked every lunar calendar based in this hemisphere. There aren’t any holidays for at least a few weeks. A big group of them getting together doesn’t make sense.”

“We’re looking at maybe three. That’s not a huge group,” he replied.

“Two’s company; three’s a crowd,” she countered.

He dragged his fingertips along the upcoming days on the paper calendar. “If they’re keeping up the pattern, in the next four days three more people could die.”

She looked up at him. “Do you want to call Dean?”

“Yeah,” he sighed while rubbing his temples. “I think so.”

Sam pulled out his phone and paced the room a bit as he called Dean. When the call was picked up, he immediately told his older brother, “Our case just exploded on us.”

“I’m guessing not the big-ball-of-fire-and-shockwave kind of exploded.” Dean pulled the phone away from his mouth, then told presumably-Castiel, “Yeah. A metaphor.”

“We’ve got at least two monsters, maybe three. The body count is rising, and we’re guessing that we might be looking at another three victims by the end of the week. I got a look at the one that’s actively hunting in a vision, but it was dark and I’m not sure I could pick him out of a crowd too easily.”

“We’re in a jam ourselves,” Dean replied, preempting any actual request for help. “One of the idols turned out to be some active holy symbol for this ghoul cult.”

“Ghoul cult?” 

“Long story. Anyway, we’re literally tailing one of our bads back to what might be a nest. If we break away right now...” Dean said apologetically. “Tying this up plus drive time, I’m guessing we could get to you in a couple days—if we don’t have any more surprises.” He moved his mouth away from the phone again. “Cas, is your grace enough to pop—”

“Don’t,” Sam interjected. Castiel’s angelic powers were still spotty at best. The last thing they needed was for the fallen angel to get tapped out from the teleportation, leaving Dean without backup. “You need him for cover.”

“Let me make a few calls,” Dean offered. “I know some hunters not too far from you. They might be able to help out.”

Sam hesitated. He didn’t like the idea of other hunters getting involved. The greater community didn’t know that Ruby was a demon, something which would certainly complicate matters if it ever came out. Only a handful of close friends even knew that Sam was a psychic.

“I don’t know about having other hunters around.”

Ruby looked up at his words. Her expression was the same wariness that he was feeling. As much as reinforcements might be theoretically helpful, other hunters meant that they would have to be slightly more on guard.

“You’re the one talking about maybe being outnumbered,” Dean countered. “I can at least find out if anyone is between cases.”

“Don’t tell them where we are. Just give me the number of anyone willing to be on-call.” Sam shared an uneasy glance with Ruby. “We’ll be the ones to decide if we’re taking that risk.”


	6. Such an Inadequate Word as Humanity

Sam was sitting around on his bed running over the scenario in his head when he remembered how the male  camazotz  had held his partner down. The way she had arched her back and cried out, it seemed as though she had enjoyed it. He wondered if Ruby enjoyed that sort of thing, being restrained. The thought didn’t do anything for him. He supposed there was some implicit amount of trust involved in that type of kink, though as hunting partners he and Ruby routinely entrusted their lives to each other, and as a demon, some of the time Ruby could teleport out of bondage—She probably wouldn’t be fond of the idea of introducing devil’s traps into the bedroom.

But reflecting on it, the way the male camazotz was holding the female down, it wasn’t like bondage or teasing. It had a visceral, primal quality. What if the  restraining, snapping teeth, and chirps were  based on a sort of instinct? As far as he knew, it was common practice for male animals to hold onto females during sex, as some act of dominance or claiming. It might very well be the same for monsters. What were they other than predators? Actually, in many ways he’d been thinking of this wrong. 

The species’ association to the lunar calendar and old religious practices may have been unintentionally sending them down the wrong path. That was why the thought of a sexually active couple had been so surprising. They’d been treating the  camazotz  as something closer to isolated spirits, but when it came down to it there wasn’t any definitive proof of that. They were feeding and fucking, just like any other animal. It wasn’t that they were a bat fiend; they were a monsterous species that were apparently rather similar to bats. Maybe they needed to look closer at what had been deemed a similar animal. Sam scowled for a moment, then grabbed his laptop and searched online for information about the behavior of bats.

After twenty minutes of searching, Sam’s stomach dropped. “We’ve got a problem.”

“Don’t we always,” Ruby muttered from where she was reading on the other side of the room. “What’d you find?”

“Female bats can delay getting pregnant. They can store semen inside of them for weeks while waiting for the right time to start a pregnancy.”

She looked up at his with a furrowed brow. “Kinda gross, but I don’t get what you’re saying. What’s this mean for us?”

“The time is right when the female has enough nutrition,” he explained. “The male victim means the female camazotz was hunting a week ago, but then she stopped. She’s conserving her energy. Now there are more missing women than the male can eat by himself, or even the two of them based on that feeding chart. Her partner is bringing her meals before the normal feeding schedule. I think they’re getting her ready to have a pup.”

Her unenthusiastic expression told him she was willing to accept that working theory until something came along to correct them. She sipped her coffee, processing it for a moment before adding, “If they’ve already fucked it’s not enough to kill him to stop it. Assuming they already fucked, for all practical purposes, she’s already pregnant.” Ruby closed her book, then sat up more in her chair. “So how do we find them?”

“I got a halfway decent look at the victim in my vision. So far she hasn’t turned up in the morgue, which means she might still be out there. And I caught a few details about the guy—mostly his silhouette, but….“ He gave a little shrug, unable to do more with such limited resources. “The female will probably be hunkered down somewhere, saving her strength while he’s out, hunting for the two of them.”

“Maybe two and change,” Ruby corrected.

“God, I hope not.”

“I don’t think we have the luxury of hope on a case like this.”

* * *

Sam slowly turned the wooden stake over in his hand. He had started examining it but quickly found himself lost in unpleasant thoughts. The hunt felt more unseemly than usual. It wasn’t hard for him to see why: just as he was starting to form a romantic relationship with someone, they were pursuing another couple. The whole thing made him feel like he was looking through a pane of glass to the other side and catching his reflection. Ruby was a demon and he was a psychic; they were a couple that might’ve fallen into some hunters’ concept of fair game—though they didn’t feed on humans and weren’t at risk of spawning a litter of predators. He and Ruby weren’t the same as the camazotz. He knew that… but when he tried to quantify the disparity he became flustered. Regardless of the differences, it was still a bit too close to home.

He looked over at Ruby. She was doing her makeup in preparation for another night staking out the clubs, looking for the victim from his vision or, more desirably, the camazotz. As he watched her, Ruby blinked her eyes black, utilizing some enhanced sight to check a detail of her eyeshadow. He wasn’t even fazed by her casual displays of inhuman ability. The way she’d asked him about his visions and listened without any judgment—her acceptance of his uncommon aspects were also making him begin to accept them for better or worse. He was relieved to finally be able to accept his own asexuality, and finding a way to live comfortably with that part of him. But being confronted with another inhuman couple, feeling it ignite his empathy—that raised another issue.

In a quiet, thoughtful voice he asked Ruby, “Do you think I’m human?”

She stared at him for a few seconds. “What’s wrong?”

“Do you?”

Ruby put down the eyeshadow and blinked her eyes back to normal, giving him her full attention. “I’m not sure where the line is,” she confessed. She walked over and sat down beside him on the bed. “Is being human really so important?”

“It doesn’t bother me that you’re a demon,” he assured her. “Maybe it took time for me to get used to it, but I don’t feel like you’re any less of a good person. But when I think about what I am—my humanity…. I don’t know.”

He didn’t feel innocent or clean.  Going back to when he was a child, fantasizing about the Knights of the Round Table, he’d felt that unease. Maybe that was part of the life of a hunter, but part of it was undeniably his demon blood. There was a reason the greater hunting community didn’t know what he was or what he could do. Even Dean, someone who loved him, didn’t like discussing the reality of the visions. It was a thing that no one talked about, and either as a chicken or the egg, it was inextricably linked to a belief that it was shameful.

“Humanity is such a fucked up word,” Ruby muttered. “What makes humans have the monopoly on goodness? What makes them the standard that everyone gets held up to? They made their language based on this narrow worldview, and doing something as simple as saying that I have empathy and value is compared or contrasted with  _ humanity _ .” She took his hand. “Sam, I don’t care what you are. I don’t want to quantify or qualify you.”

“Not everyone is as understanding as you.”

“Well, somebody has to set the curve,” she replied while pretending to smuggly buff her fingernails on her dress.

He exhaled a small chuckle at her attempt to lighten the mood a bit, then explained, “It’s just, I look at the camazotz…. They’re a couple.”

“Too close for home?” When he didn’t reply immediately, she told him, “We aren’t like them.” 

“We kill,” he countered.

She sighed, then took a moment to consider their moral high ground. “Maybe it’d be different if the world knew that humans weren’t the top of the food chain. If it was all out in the open and humans knew how to defend themselves…. As is, they’re being picked off, dragged into these traps. And we’re the fools that are unlucky enough to have the power to save them.” Her voice turned a bit more serious as she reminded him, “There are a lot of bodies in the morgue and they’re just gonna keep coming unless we stop this.”

He knew she was right. “It’d be easier if monsters couldn’t love.”

She placed a hand on his cheek then leaned forward and kissed him. “Don’t go hoping that the bridge will burn without thinking about who might cross it.” His brow furrowed slightly at her comment, but before he could say anything, she continued. “Just like there are all types of humans, there are all types of non-humans, including the dangerous ones. Sorry that life’s complicated and you’re up to your ass in morally-grey-area.” She pushed a stray hair out of his face, tucking it behind his ear. “Hey, if this is really tearing you up inside, let’s walk away. You don’t need to put yourself through this.”

He looked down at the autopsy photos in the case file on the nightstand. “Innocent people are dying.” He nodded to himself, trying to instill some conviction. “We’re still gonna try to stop them.”

“You’re a good man.” She lightly kissed him again. “That’s why this shit eats you up. It’s not a bad thing. It means you’re paying attention.”

* * *

By the time they got to the club he was feeling a bit better. The majority of the last two days had been spent buried in books and digging through websites, trying to find some new insight. Dwelling on the nature of the thing they were hunting, while being so cooped up had turned his critical eye inward. So getting out and focusing on something else, even if it was the unappealing interactions involved in clubbing, was a relief.

Before they went in, Ruby stopped Sam. She playfully poked him in the chest, then spoke with false concern. “Now, don’t you dare go off fucking the whole bar. I know you’re insatiable—“

He rolled his eyes as he placed a finger to her lips, which curled into a devilish grin. “Somehow I think I’ll manage to keep it in my pants.”

“Text me if you need me to liberate you from the clutches of an overly-handsy date.”

“I will.” He fixed the orientation of her necklace, then smiled awkwardly down at her. There was something he’d been meaning to tell her, and now seemed as good a time as any. “If you want—If you need to go off with someone, not for the job, but just cause you need that, it’s okay.“

Her head tilted to the side at the suggestion. “Are you giving me permission to go fuck other people?”

He shifted uncomfortably. “I know you have needs—“

Ruby grabbed his collar and pulled him down into a kiss. “In there I’m working the job, just like you. And while I’m faking a smile and batting my eyes for all those pretty, horny guys, you know what I’m gonna be thinking about?” She leaned in to whisper in his ear. “You, standing around completely naked, reading a treatise on intraplanar conjuration while I run my vibrator out of batteries. Understood?”

Sam swallowed his surprise at the scenario. It wasn’t the sort of evening he’d have thought of, but that didn’t mean he was opposed. Her suggestion was only slightly more involved that when he’d dropped his towel. He cautiously asked, “How long does the charge on its batteries last?”

“About an hour.”

“How long is that treatise?”

Her fingers teasingly danced up his chest as she replied. “Oh, I trust that a clever guy like you can drag it out and make a game of it.”

That would definitely be something to get his mind off of things for a bit. “I think I can accommodate.”

She lightly caressed his lips in lieu of a kiss. “See, Sammy. Why would I settle for anything less than you?”

He didn’t even know how to respond. Never in his life had he been characterized as a preferable romantic partner. He’d always assumed that he was more of someone to be settled for, a boyfriend burdened with enough baggage to scare off those who bothered to look closely at him. And yet, for some reason, there was a person that had actually chosen just him, without accepting his invitation to seek sexual gratification elsewhere.

In a moment of vulnerability, he hugged her to him. He knew that they shouldn’t be embracing on the sidewalk for very long right before stepping in to work covers that involved not knowing each other, but he didn’t know how else to deal with his emotions.

“Maybe tomorrow we can close the books for a couple hours?” Ruby suggested, seemingly reading his mind. “With the visions and how you’ve been beating yourself up, maybe you need a little break. Like you said,  _ us _ —we’re a big change, and we’ve been trying to do this while hunting some bat monsters. We’ll do our due diligence tonight while the camazotz might be prowling, but fuck I want to turn off the job for a bit and have it just be the two of us.”

According to the feeding calendar, one victim would be taken, then there would be a roughly-two-day window where the male camazotz wouldn’t be hunting. If they couldn’t catch him that night, they’d likely be somewhat stuck waiting for the next opening when he was searching for prey. That would give them a bit of down time, to really focus on each other. It’d be nice to just hold her without it being couched in research or a spell—or while worrying about blowing their covers. He reluctantly released her as he glanced around at possible witnesses. There were a couple of women strolling down the sidewalk, a man sitting on the bench across the street, and a teenager walking his dog, but they all seemed out of earshot.

“Tomorrow, assuming there aren’t any new leads on the camazotz, we’ll take a little break,” he assured her. The corner of his lips curled into a grin. “I can become an expert in intraplanar conjuration.”

“My hero.” She squeezed his hand, before making her way into the bar. He gave her a ten-minute head start, then followed.

* * *

The stakeout didn’t turn up any leads and the next morning they had little to do except for waiting for a call from the morgue, so they decided to take some time for themselves while keeping their phones nearby. They got breakfast and talked about anything but the case; they didn’t even touch upon hunting or combat training at all. Sam told her about his awkward transition into civilian life during his freshman year of college, and she one-upped him with stories about her growing pains involved in becoming a demon. Afterwards, they took a walk around the small downtown, chatting about music preferences and listening to Ruby recite a list of concerts she’d attended, that would make Dean turn green with envy. As they meandered through the quiet streets, he wrapped an arm around Ruby’s shoulder, pulling her to him. She reached up to gently touch his hand, reassuringly. It felt a little silly, indulging in such a public display of affection—a few people glanced at them as they walked by, a man across the way full-on watched them—but Sam avoided eye contact and shrugged off the stares. For the first time in his life, he was on a date and he was comfortable. 

When they got back to their motel room, Ruby smiled playfully at him, then started stripping down to her panties and just a soft tank top. He assumed that she was about to ask him to read to her while she touched herself, so he pulled off his shirt and slipped off his jeans, but before her took off his boxers she said, “I was thinking about what you said. Our relationship, it isn’t a human one. Ace thing aside, we’re atypical, agreed?”

“Yeah…,” he replied, unsure of what she was getting at. Masturbating to treaties on magic certainly sounded like it toed the line on what constituted typically human pleasure.

“So maybe we don’t need to stick to just human stuff.” When he stared at her in confusion, she asked, “Can I try something?”

He didn’t quite understand what she was getting at, but he generally trusted her to respect his limits. “Sure.”

She took his hand and guided him over to sit down on the bed. His stomach knotted slightly, uncertain want she was going to attempt. He had faith that she wouldn’t try anything too forward, but the fact of the matter was that they were both learning the boundaries of their new relationship. She was venturing into their new dynamic, fumbling in the dark. The truth was that in a very real way he was also navigating by little more than intuition. He didn’t have much experience with the nuances of an intimate relationship because in the past his partners had always blown straight through what might’ve been the more delicate layers of closeness in order to charge headlong into sex. But this time it was different. They were going slowly, trying to find a way to make things work for both of them. That meant experimentation and taking a few risks.

Ruby lay down beside him on the bed. After a moment, her smoke slowly flowed out of her body, then swirled in a loose ring around him. His instinct told him to flee, but that was based on old concepts of demons. Despite the visceral feeling of worry in his gut, some rational part of his brain kept whispering that she wouldn’t suddenly possess him. She knew how much of a violation that was. It didn’t make sense that she’d suddenly cross that line. This was Ruby and he owed her his trust if they were ever going to figure this out. 

“That’s you.” 

Sam wasn’t sure if she could understand him when she had no ears, but the words just fell clumsily out of his mouth regardless. Her cloud rocked gently, lingering a safe distance from him, yet close enough that he could see the tiny wisps and currents weaving and flowing into each other. He slowly raised a hand, holding it out just a couple inches shy of touching her. There was almost a soft static sensation that made the hairs on the back of his arm stand up. 

The cloud gingerly reached out to engulf his hand. He’d never touched a demonic cloud before. It—she was pleasantly warm and tingled his flesh. He could almost feel a faint power in her. Whether it was magic or something akin to a life force, he had no idea, but it was thrilling. She slid up his arm, along his shoulder and the back of his neck, flowing through his hair, massaging his scalp. The sensation was an embrace unlike anything he’d ever experienced. 

“That’s nice,” he whispered as he leaned his head back and closed his eyes.

Sam could feel his dick starting to get hard from the intimate caresses along his upper body. He began to blush and shifted to cover the slight bulge in his boxers. His breath hitched a bit as he let out a gasp, surprised by the rush. It was the first time someone else had been an active participant in his arousal. The whole thing was startling.

In a swift, blur of motion Ruby recoiled from him. She poured back into her body and sat up with a concerned look on her face. They both scooted a few inches apart, giving each other some space to process what had just happened.

She hastily asked, “Was that—“

“I….” His mouth moved a bit, trying to transmute his confused feelings into remotely useful words, but he was having trouble analyzing much of anything. “I’ve never….”

She nodded to herself. “Not bad though, right?”

“Not bad. Just a lot.” He rubbed the back of his neck, then remembered that he was trying to hide his partially-formed erection. His hands quickly went back to his lap.

“Maybe you need a shower,” Ruby suggested.

“Yeah.” He didn’t even try to play it cool or be evasive; he just got up and headed straight for the privacy of the bathroom.

[ ](https://imgur.com/t5oisRa)

* * *

Later that evening, Ruby was snuggled up next to him in the bed as he read. They both stayed in their underwear so that they could enjoy the untempered warmth and softness of each other’s skin. A carefully-positioned, thin pillow provided an added level of comfort for him, so that the line didn’t get accidentally crossed while making out or cuddling. Human bodies more-or-less lined up so that genitals would bump into each other while lying down so close together. It didn’t matter if both of them were attentive. There were bound to be slip-ups, which a little padding would hopefully mitigate.

She was lightly dragging her fingertips along his abs when she asked, “You do jerk off, right?”

He didn’t blame her for being curious. A lot of people seemed to think that being asexual meant being a robot. Admittedly, there were aspects of sex that he just couldn’t see the appeal in, but life was rarely all-or-nothing. He existed on a spectrum, likely somewhere in the middle or possibly leaning towards the sex-adverse end.

“Yeah,” he replied without looking up from his book. “It was a warm shower, not a cold one.”

She nodded to herself for a moment, before asking, “I was wondering, what if we tried it together?”

He marked his stopping point with the tome’s ribbon, then put it on the nightstand. He thought he’d been pretty clear that he wasn’t comfortable with them touching each other’s genitals, which definitely removed mutual masturbation from the table. It was possible that she was talking about the two of them being together in bed, him touching himself and her pleasuring herself. He wasn’t thrilled by the idea, but it wasn’t the worst thing he’d heard of. It just produced a bit of anxiety in him at the thought that their bodies would be so close during such a sensitive time. The thought of accidentally making contact or otherwise crossing some unforeseen threshold made his stomach knot. He liked the idea of her getting pleasure from his company, but he didn’t want to be so close while it was happening; he’d hardly be able to keep his erection with all the stress.

“I don’t know how comfortable I am with us masturbating close together,” he confessed. “I’d probably be too nervous to really get much out of it.”

“Actually, I was thinking of something else,” she replied. “What if you’re the only one doing it, and I’m—“ A wisp of her smoke cloud flowed out of her mouth and caressed his lips. “—inside you, enjoying whatever ride you feel like taking me on.”

He felt like his stomach had dropped a few inches. Ruby was suggesting that she possess him. That was just the sort of thing he’d been worrying about earlier— Actually, she was asking for his consent for her to possess him. No one had ever asked him for something like that. In fact, he’d only ever heard of that sort of thing in the case of angels, but even those sort of arrangements seemed dubious at best.

“Wait. You want to possess me?”

“Kinda,” she replied, not-entirely sure about the terminology. “I mean, I’d be riding you, but you’d still be in charge. I’d just get to feel what you feel. We’d get to share it and you wouldn’t have to do anything you don’t normally do.”

It’d been years since he’d been possessed by Meg, but it had been a traumatic experience. He’d been used to murder people and manipulate people he cared about. That sort of loss of control and abuse— She was saying that she wouldn’t actually take advantage of him, but the thought of making himself so vulnerable to her, not just placing his autonomy and existence in her hands, but also his trauma. It was a huge ask, one that he wasn’t sure he could do.

“Being possessed is something I don’t....” He sighed and pulled back from her slightly. “A few years ago, I was possessed by a demon and made to do things. It was....”

She looked a little taken aback, though he wasn’t sure if she was surprised to hear that he’d gone through that sort of nightmare or whether she was surprised that he thought she might put him in a terrible state again.

“I didn’t know,” she assured him. “I wouldn’t do that to you. I didn’t mean—I just thought I could be a passenger. Like you could set the pace and the second you want me out you’d just say so. I didn’t—”

“It’s okay. I don’t think you wanted….” He tried to sort through his cluttered, anxious mind. Somehow they’d gone from a nice evening to a very uncomfortable conversation.

“It’s too much,” she told him. “Just pretend I didn’t say anything.”

Part of him expected her to get up out of bed, hurt by his denial, but she stayed with him. On some level, he felt guilty for telling her no. Communicating his limits wasn’t as agonizing as it had been before, yet he couldn’t help but feel a bit ashamed of himself. 

Rationally, he knew that social norms were whispering in his ear that he should go along with whatever and that she should be upset at him. Those were the sort of thoughts that had plagued him during his teenage years, sending him into some of the worst experiences of his life. He knew it was a mental path that went nowhere good, and yet those expectations had been ingrained in him for so long. But Ruby didn’t give a fuck about societal norms. She wasn’t clutching her pearls at his rebuff or pushing him to reconsider; she was staying there with him, and that meant more than any overly romanticized trope.

He wasn’t sure how to express everything that he was feeling, so he simply told her, “Ruby, I’m processing a lot.”

Her fingers interlaced with his as she took his hand. “I know, and it’s alright.”

He gently squeezed her hand and whisper, “I’m glad you’re with me.”

* * *

Sam was seated at the table comparing the updated list of victims to the feeding chart while Ruby whittled a second stake. It was true that the female camazotz wasn’t actively hunting, meaning that they weren’t really at risk of fighting two at once, but they needed to be as prepared as they could and a fresh shipment of birch wood at the lumber yard had finally given them much-needed materials. He glanced over at her progress. Between the remaining carving, then the blessing process, she’d be working on it for another six hours or so.

He rechecked the calendar, then said, “He’s gonna be on the prowl soon, and worse than usual. Both of them need to feed in the next 24 hours.”

“You think he’s gonna try to grab two at the same time or one after another?”

“I don’t know.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Subduing two people sounds like it’d be harder, but with the neurotoxin, maybe he could down one, then the other before—” 

His cell started ringing, interrupting the unpleasant scenario playing out in his mind. He’d hoped it was the police with a fresh lead, but it was Dean.

“Please tell me it’s good news,” Sam said in lieu of a greeting.

“It depends how you look at it.”

He rolled his eyes at what could only be bad news with that sort of preface. “What now?”

“You remember the Miller cousins? I tried tapping them as potential backup for you. Turns out, they’ve been on the case for a day or two. They’re probably in town.”

Sam buried his face in his hands. There were probably other hunters in town, meanwhile he and Ruby had been dabbling in her being outside of her meatsuit. It hadn’t ever been an issue for them before, but technically a demonic smoke cloud, untempered by a human body produced more omens in an area. Any hunters within thirty miles who was actively hunting would be watching for demons. The handful of times that she’d done it at the bunker hadn’t proved a problem thanks to the Men of Letters’ protective warding, but they hadn’t bothered fortifying their motel room in any significant way.

“It’s two of them, right?”

“Three,” Dean corrected. “At least it’s backup—or with them there’s good odds they’ll accidentally be bait.”

Sam pursed his lips before blurting out, “Ruby’s slipped her body yesterday.”

Dean’s end of the line was ominously quiet for a moment, then he said, “I’m sorry. Did you say that Rube slipped her meatsuit on a job? What the hell was she doing?”

“She wasn’t jumping anyone,” he hastily assured his brother. “We were trying something out. It was in the motel room.”

“You two watch your asses. The Millers are a bunch of fuck-for-brains, but even they can spot omens.”

“Do they know I’m a psychic?”

“Don’t think so.”

He could probably justify all his sources for figuring out that they were dealing with two  camazotz , but had no idea how he was even supposed to give them the intel that they were looking for a breeding pair with only the male actively hunting. Where exactly did he learn that if not his vision? And if he wanted to keep them away from Ruby, that meant pretending he was hunting solo, which was a rookie move when the body count was approaching ten people. The whole thing had become a quagmire.

“Text me their number,” Sam groaned. He wasn’t sure what he was going to do about the situation, but it didn’t hurt to be able to contact them. At the very least he could try to figure out if they’d noticed the demonic omens.

“What’re you gonna do?”

“No fucking clue.” 

He hung up, then waited a few seconds for Dean to send him the phone number. When it came through, he groaned and looked up at Ruby. She had stopped whittling, to silently watch his visible anguish.

“That bad, huh?”

Sam rubbed his face, then told her, “There might be other hunters in town. Maybe even while you were out of your suit.”

Some of her natural lightheartedness faded at the realization that she might easily get a target on her back. They hadn’t ever faced that sort of problem in the field before. With the exception of Gordon Walker, hunters had always been a hypothetical threat. Regardless of the novelty of it, Sam didn’t dismiss just how bad it could get.

“We can’t do anymore of the smoke stuff,” he said as he got up and paced a bit. “And you—until we know what they’re thinking, it’s dangerous for you—”

“They’re hunting a bat monster,” she replied. “I’m a demon; slightly different genus.”

“Yeah, well, these hunters are idiots and they’ve only been on the case for a day or so—so who knows if they’ve even heard of a  camazotz —and there might’ve been omens.” Sam gripped her shoulders. “Hunters still believe that old-wives tale about demons mutilating cattle. What’s to say they don’t see the drained bodies and the demonic omens, and think you’re the big bad?”

“You’re serious?”

Honestly, he was terrified. Angels had been on Earth long enough that it wasn’t uncommon for hunters to carry their lethal blades. Temporarily losing Ruby to exorcism would be infuriating, both because of the physical pain it would cause her and the struggle that she’d face making her way back to him. But a hunter outright killing her was on the table, and the idea of that happening was too much.

“Completely serious.” He grabbed his pistol, then checked the magazine. “I’ll go meet with them. I can trade intel, try to find out what they’re thinking. If they say anything about demons, I’ll try to point them in another direction, then the two of us will take off.”

“Some of our key intel is from your vision. Are you really gonna be able to tiptoe around that?” she asked knowingly. “If you’re this worried about me, I get to worry about you. There are other hunters in town now. We can both just leave, right now. Let them finish this.”

He rested his forehead against hers and closed his eyes. It was tempting, but he couldn’t just turn his back on the case. The Millers were too incompetent to get the job done right, especially after he and Ruby had muddied the area with demonic omens. Fleeing now meant leaving the camazotz couple to continue feeding on the town, and possibly reproducing.

“If you want the job done right,” he sighed. “I’ll try to point them at the camazotz. I can show them the calendar and the feeding chart. They might just swallow the idea of a breeding pair. Maybe they weren’t even looking for omens?”

She held the side of his face, so that they were eye-to-eye. “The second you feel like something’s off, just get the hell out of there.”

“Subtly,” he corrected.

“I don’t give a fuck if you have to shoot out all their knees.”

“If I have to,” he assured her, then used the number Dean had given him to text the Millers and set up a meetup. He suggested a diner on the other side of town so that there was more of an opportunity for him to lose them if things didn’t go well and they started tailing him. It was nearly nine on a Tuesday night, which hopefully meant that there wouldn’t be too many people around.

“Pack up our stuff, just in case we need to bolt,” he told her as he put on his shoulder holster, under his jacket.

“You want to load up the car while we’re at it?”

They’d been living out of the motel room for about two weeks. Their suits were hanging in the closet. Dozens of books, binders, and containers of spell components were scattered about on every horizontal surface. It would take time to pack, time which Ruby had, but he was supposed to be across town in twenty minutes.

“Just get the suitcases ready to throw in the backseat,” he suggested, then grabbed the cad keys from the nightstand. “And keep our fake IDs—anything that could trace back to us, keep it on you, in case you need to teleport right out of here.”

“I’m still tapped out on porting. I can only make it a couple miles like this.”

“That’s still a headstart on these hunters.”

“Sam.” Ruby intercepted him as he walked to the door. Her hand gently cupped his cheek and her eyes drifted across his face, savoring the moment or maybe searching for words. After a few seconds, she placed their only finished wooden stake in his hands . “Just in case.”

He nodded, then tucked it into an interior jacket pocket as best he could. “If you don’t hear from me in a half hour, call Dean.”


	7. Pursuit & Priorities

Sam drove toward the dinner, but stopped in a parking lot that was a couple blocks away. He didn’t want the hunters knowing what kind of car they were driving. The two of them could always ditch their ride and steal a new one to throw pursuers off their trail, but it was time-consuming and created its own risks. Instead he’d walk the handful of minutes and hopefully preserve some of his mystique.

He sat in the car for a moment, gathering his wits, then gathering the limited notes and resources that he’d brought. Obviously, everything referencing his visions or the higher level magic had been left at the motel, but so had anything that was in Ruby’s handwriting. He was pretending to be hunting solo. Having a set of distinctly feminine penmanship all over his bulky-script notes was something of a giveaway. After double-checking the materials, he tidied them into a small pile, then got out of the car.

Walking down the quiet street, he looked down at his watch to see if he was running late. Out of the corner of his eye, Sam caught the reflection of a man in a storefront window. The man was about fifteen feet behind him, following him. At first he thought it was one of the Millers attempting to sneak up on him, then he recognized the guy. 

The man had been sitting on the bench across the street from the last club he and Ruby had staked out— Thinking about it more, Sam had also spotted him watching them the next day during the public display of affection. He hadn’t thought much at the time, various passersby had stared… and he’d been a bit too embarrassed or distracted to really meet anyone’s eyes. The guy had been following them. He hadn’t recognized the man the first two times, but now, with the moonlight and shadow painting him in black and white, he knew it was the camazotz. 

Sam pulled the wooden stake from his pocket, then turned around, ready to fight. They were still several long strides apart, but he had no idea how a camazotz actually fought. The lore had been vague about that kind of stuff. Evidence from the victims’ bodies and the vision showed that they were easily capable of subduing unsuspecting humans, yet that didn’t mean they weren’t formidable in conventional combat. In the vision, the female had grown incredibly sharp claws and had a barbed tongue that cut through flesh like softened butter.

He was being stalked, probably as prey. This was different than some opportunistic pick-up at a bar. The camazotz had been watching him for two days. This was just the first time Sam had been alone since the predator had seen him and Ruby outside the club before their stakeout.  The way the camazotz eyed the wooden stake, the guy wasn’t surprised he was a hunter.

“How’d you know?” Sam asked him, both genuinely curious and also in an attempt to buy time. In theory, the Millers would be a few blocks away in a couple minutes. He might be able to run for it and hope that he could reach backup before getting tackled from behind, but he didn’t know how fast these things could move.

“My ears tend to perk up when I hear ‘camazotz,’ and we have very good ears.”

Sam nodded subtly. He could kick himself. Of course bat monsters would have superhuman hearing. Meanwhile, he and Ruby had very briefly discussed the case in public. They’d thought they were far enough away, but had misjudged their surroundings.

The camazotz didn’t take his eyes off Sam or let his guard down in the slightest, but he circled around him, away from the tree-lined sidewalk, into the open street. It felt like he was calling Sam out to pistols at high noon. He took off his jacket and shirt, carefully laying them down so that they wouldn’t get damaged, then he stretched for a moment to limber up. All the while he cautiously watched Sam.

It almost seemed to be baiting. The monster was old enough that surely he’d been in a few fights before. It didn’t take a genius to realize that undoing buttons in front of an enemy was just asking to be abruptly attacked. But in that instance Sam hesitated. He couldn’t tell whether it was out of concern that his foe was tempting that sort of thing or if his empathy was allowing for a more sportsmanlike fight. Regardless, he let the camazotz stretch for a couple seconds before starting to approach him.

“I don’t want to fight you,” Sam told him. At that point it was true. If he had gotten the drop on the camazotz, maybe things would’ve been different. However, in that moment, seeing the confidence on the older, muscular predator, the fight seemed uneven. And if he died then and there, Ruby would be vulnerable to an ambush and/or the camazotz might skip town. One way or another, he needed to survive, and with fighting looking less and less like a good option, talking came to mind. “We know about your mate.”

The smug expression on the man’s face dissolved into concern for a split second, before he steeled himself. His jaw clenched and eyes narrowed.

“If you don’t want to fight, drop the stake.” The camazotz snarled, “Don’t threaten my girlfriend.”

Sam didn’t dare drop the stake, but he made another attempt. “No more people die. If you just leave town, don’t kill anyone—“

“Bullshit. You’re hunters.”

“We haven’t killed your girlfriend yet,” Sam said, hoping to maintain some sort of leverage.

“Stop talking about her!” shouted the camazotz. He was livid, and shook his head. “No. You don’t know where she is. You really expect me to believe you’ve just sitting back while she feeds. Well, where is she?!”

Sam’s bluff had been called. Rightly so; it had been a desperate play. He hesitated. The vision looked like it could’ve been a motel or hotel room, but it could’ve been a cheap apartment, and there was no way of knowing the specific address.

“I thought so. You’re playing games, but I don’t.” The camazotz manifested his claws, then a smile formed on his face at a sudden thought. “Unlike you, I actually know where your girl is.” He made a little grunt of satisfaction before adding, “And her blood smells exotic.”

Before Sam could say or do anything, the camazotz crouched down and leaped straight up nearly fifteen feet in the air. For a split second, Sam thought his enemy was attempting to pounce on him, but that wasn’t the case. His jaw dropped as he suddenly understood why the guy had removed his shirt and limbered up.

In a swift, fluid motion the camazotz pressed his arms to the sides of his bare chest, then raised them again to the sky, pulling wings out from the sides of his torso. It all happened so quickly that Sam could hardly believe what he’d just witnessed. Somehow, for each wing, five, multi-jointed ribs of bone measuring well over eight feet in length unfurled outward. Between them was a membrane of flesh, creating a sturdy webbing. His arms held onto the top-most rib, and he used his arm-strength to help push his wings down to gain initial altitude.

Sam stared, dumbfounded with shock at the sight of such an inhuman creature. For the most part, monsters that could pass for humans only had the ability to change their eyes, or grow claws or fangs. The whole thing defied logic, though, to be fair, he was a psychic who was in a relationship with cloud of sentient smoke from Hell. He’d barely shaken himself out of his daze when he figured out that the guy was leaving instead of fighting.

“Don’t worry,” the camazotz shouted down to him. “I’ve got your scent. I’ll get you afterwards.”

Sam’s heart started hammering as he realized that the bat was heading in the direction of his and Ruby’s motel. He hastily drew his pistol and unloaded the magazine, trying to pierce the wings enough to ground the guy, but only landed a single shot. He ran for the car, hopped in, and started racing after the camazotz. As he sped down the road, he pulled out his phone and called Ruby.

“The camazotz is heading for the motel. He made us.” He felt like kicking himself for thinking so narrowly about what a vampire-bat monster might entail. “The fucking thing flies. They have wings.”

“Wings?”

He was just about to tell her to get out of there, but the camazotz had mentioned having Sam’s scent and liking how Ruby smelled. It’d chase her if she tried to stay in the area and she’d said that she could only teleport a short distance on her current energy reserves. “He has your scent, but I don’t think he knows you’re a demon. Don’t run; fortify. Is the second stake ready?”

“No, but I have the angel blade,” she replied. “How long do I have?”

“Maybe five minutes, as the crow flies.”

“Shit,” she muttered to herself. “See you in ten.”

Sam hung up, then sped down the road while compulsively checking the night sky for signs of movement. 

He got there in five.

* * *

As soon as Sam arrived at the motel, he could tell that there was a fight in progress. Civilians were running away, screaming about a demon—whichever one their ignorance might think qualified. With all the chaos, it was only a matter of time before the police or the Millers showed up. He barely stopped the car before jumping out and running to their room.

He spotted the  camazotz standing by the door. The monster’s wings were gone and his pants were blood-stained, but his humanoid torso didn’t appear to have suffered that much damage. There were a few slices across his chest and arms, having dodged multiple swings—evidently, the guy was agile. Sam couldn’t tell whether the excess blood was Ruby’s or from injuries inflicted on his now-withdrawn wings. 

When he got a bit closer, he saw Ruby further into the room. A little blood trickling from her split lip. The left sleeve had nearly been torn off her shirt, which was in bloody tatters near her waist thanks to a set of claw marks. She was in a defensive stance, holding the angel blade, but as soon as the camazotz turned his head, either at the sound or smell of Sam’s arrival, she charged. Barely managing to dodge a swift swipe of his claws, she lunged forward,  stabbing him in the stomach…. But the guy didn’t collapse or even look particularly fazed. 

“Blade doesn’t work!” she shouted to Sam.

Before she could recover from the ineffective attack, the camazotz gripped the handle of the angel blade, holding it to him while shoving her off of him. In a display of surprising strength, he threw her back into wall. Her body partially smashed through the drywall with a loud crack of splintering wooden studs. The hit seemed to have stunned her a bit as she struggled to immediately dislodge herself from the wall. Seeing his opportunity, the camazotz pulled the blade from his torso, then moved to strike her while she was vulnerable.

Sam pulled the stake from his jacket and ran at the camazotz, but the monster turned around in a blur of motion. Before he knew it the stake had been ripped from his hand and thrown across the room. His eyes started to move to see where the weapon had landed, but thankfully his training kicked in, keeping him focused on his foe’s hands. He barely evaded a swing of the angel blade, only suffering a cut along his forearm, then was knocked backwards. The force of the hit sent him tumbling over one of the beds, landing hard on the ground. 

He pushed himself up in time to see the camazotz going after Ruby again, angel blade in hand. The blessed stake was nowhere to be seen, but he hardly even thought about the fact that he was unarmed. Sam jumped up and ran at the camazotz, tackling him into the wall next to where Ruby had fallen. He grabbed the camazotz’s wrists, desperately trying to render the claws useless, then slammed the guy’s right hand into a wall stud until the blade was dropped. However, while Sam was focused on disarming the predator, the  camazotz licked the wound on Sam’s forearm, tearing open the flesh. 

Within a couple seconds, the neurotoxin in the saliva started making Sam dizzy. His limbs immediately began feeling heavy and it was hard for him to stand. He struggled to hold onto his enemy, but with a quick motion, the camazotz had slipped from his grip, then a single shove to the chest made him collapse to the floor.

The  camazotz climbed on top of Sam, pinning him to the ground. Sam tried to shove the attacker off of him, but he could hardly move. The  camazotz  grabbed both of his arms and held his wrists down, pinning them one-handed on Sam’s stomach. He leaned down, pressing his lips to the wound, infusing more toxin into Sam’s bloodstream while tearing open the injury even more.

Out of nowhere, Ruby tackled the  camazotz , forcing him off of Sam, and into the side of the dresser. She was beyond attempting some clever tactic, utilizing their research. In her rage, she grabbed the  camazotz ’s head, slamming it into the barely-carpeted concrete floor over and over again. She let out a visceral yell while bludgeoning him. The lore may have called for a blessed wooden stake to pierce their hide, but using her anger and demonic strength to spread his brain all over the ground proved equally effective.

When she was done, Ruby wiped her bloody hands on her pants, then hastily grabbed everything from the camazotz’s s pockets and stuffed them in her bra. She hurried over to check on Sam before fetching a washcloth from the bathroom, knelt down beside him and began applying pressure to the wound.

“Can you hear me?” Her voice sounded as though he was hearing it underwater.

“It’s not right,” he managed through his dizziness. He could hear the approaching whine of sirens.

“I’m gonna get you out of here,” she told him. Ruby took his hand and placed it over the improvised bandage. “Keep pressure for me. Okay, Sam?” When he didn’t reply right away she pushed his hand down onto the towel and injury, making him wince in pain. “Sam, you need to keep pressure—“

“Police! Don’t move!” shouted a cop standing in the doorway behind her. “Hands where I can see them.”

She could feel Sam start to take over maintaining pressure as he nodded subtly. Ruby slowly raised her arms.

“Stand up and turn around.”

She cautiously stood up. As soon as she was facing the cop and could see that his gun wasn’t aimed low enough to hit Sam, she teleported to be right in front of him. Her left hand grabbed the weapon, pushing it upward as the panicked cop fired several times. One bullet grazed her shoulder, but she hardly cared. With her right hand, she clutched the man’s neck and pinched down on the sides, cutting the blood flow to his brain. He struggled for a few seconds before passing out, and Ruby dropped him unceremoniously to the ground.

Ruby grabbed their emergency bag, picked up Sam, and carried him to their car. She stuffed him into the backseat, repositioned him slightly so that he was lying somewhat comfortably, then got into the driver’s seat. She sped down the highway for ten minutes before pulling off onto an unlit backroad. Once they seemed alone, she parked, grabbed the first aid kit from the glovebox, and climbed into the backseat with him.

Her petite hands moved along his warm, clammy cheeks, checking him for a fever before lifting the bandage. She examined the wound for a moment, then plucked several splinters and other pieces of debris from the ragged mess with tweezers. Afterwards, she tore open a packet of powdered disinfectant and sprinkled it over the injury. He groaned at the sting of the antiseptic, but didn’t pull away. Without waiting even a beat, she pulled the needle and stitching thread from the kit, then began sewing up the wide wound, cinching it tightly as she went. When she was done, she rebandaged the injury before taking off the tattered, blood-stained remains of her shirt and used it to dab at his forehead and cheeks.

“Are you still out of it?” she asked while checking his eyes.

He took a deep breath, then wet his dry lips before whispering, “I think less.”

“The cops are gonna be looking for us soon.” Her fingers lightly ran through his hair in an attempt to sooth him. “We’re gonna switch cars, okay? Then we’ll get out of here.”

“Okay,” he replied in a distant voice.

“Are you actually feeling better or should I be worried you’ll die if I let you sleep?”

Sam thought for a moment and raised the hand that wasn’t attached to the injured arm. He stared at it for a few seconds, rotating his wrist, studying the way the light hit it and the after-images the movement produced. After a bit, he told her, “I’m actually better. Still sucks, but probably won’t die.”

She leaned in and kissed his cheek. “Holler and I’ll be right back here.”

“Okay.” 

He weakly touched her arm before she climbed back into the front seat and started driving in search of a new car to steal. She pulled into the back parking lot of a diner on the absolute edge of town. There were no visible customers inside, which hopefully meant that the two cars belonged to employees who would be stuck at their posts. She parked, then teleported into the larger of the two sedans and began hotwiring the car. Once it was running, she unlocked the doors, popped the trunk and began moving their limited equipment. The last step was carefully moving Sam. Once he was settled, she got back on the highway and hauled ass. 

Sam lost track of time as he drifted in and out of sleep. He had a vague sense that Ruby had pulled off to the side of the road a time or two, though it wasn’t clear why they’d stopped repeatedly. At one point, he looked over to see that they were parked along the side of the highway, and Ruby was examining the handful of random objects she’d stuffed into her bra after fighting the camazotz. One of the items was unmistakably a motel room key. She stared at it for a moment, then grabbed her cell phone. 

Everything started to fade as he began nodding off again, then a light caught his attention, waking him back up. The illumination from the cell phone screen hurt his eyes, but he recognized the image as her getting directions. She glanced uncertainly between the motel room key, the map, and the clock, a few times before she looked back at him. Her face was painted with concern and disappointment. He was too groggy to figure out what was wrong; all he knew was that he wished she was smiling.

In a quiet, thoughtful voice, Ruby told him, “I stole the guy’s room key. I could go now, and maybe finish this before female finds out her mate’s dead.”

“You know where she is?” he asked, voice heavy with fatigue. He tried to lift his arm to grab her, eager to stop her from running off to another battle, but his limbs still weren’t cooperating. It was taking all his strength just to stay awake.

“Yeah.” Her eyes briefly flicked to the map on her phone, but she turned it off, then reached back and gently caressed Sam’s arm. “It doesn’t matter. Go back to sleep.”

* * *

They reached the bunker ten hours later. Sam had a vague recollection of hearing Ruby call Dean to let him know what had happened. It wasn’t clear what the end result of the camazotz hunt had been, but honestly, he was too exhausted to really care. He was nowhere near fighting shape, and he was perfectly happy to have Ruby nearby. 

He felt like he’d been placed into an industrial-strength drier and run through a tumble cycle along with those noir-style comic books that Dean loved so damn much. His depth perception was off. The contrast was up, while the color saturation was down. If he moved too quickly, the world spun one way before abruptly pivoting in the other direction for no apparent reason. But it was definitely improving. He could at least walk and carry a conversation that lasted more than four sentences… though his stamina wasn’t good for much more than that.

Walking through the halls of the bunker, he followed her, hand resting on her shoulder to help stabilize him, though he didn’t feel like there was a significant risk of him collapsing. She waited in the hallway while he took a shower with the bathroom door open. In some ways he was a little embarrassed to be in such a pathetic state, but at the same time he noticed that it wasn’t nearly as bad as previous times that he was weakened. For all her spirit and spunk, Ruby hadn’t teased him the way Dean might. She was just patient and attentive.

While getting ready for bed, it occurred to him that that was the first time that he’d ever taken a romantic partner home. Technically, it was her home too, but there was still an odd significance to it. He had his bedroom, a place that would be in his life indefinitely, and he had the option of inviting her in. The thought gave him a few butterflies, though not as many as he might’ve imagined a week ago. The gesture of sharing his space with her didn’t seem so intimidating, since the thought of being with her brought him a sort of comfort. He needed that now, while he was injured, but he also couldn’t conceive of himself ever not wanting that. It wasn’t weird to think of her being so much in his life, because she was a vital part of it, a piece that he’d been missing.

So when she knocked at his door, standing there wearing only a soft cotton t-shirt and a pair of boy shorts, he pulled back the blanket next to him for her. She entered, gently closing the door behind her, then silently walked over to the bed. He smiled when she grabbed the second pillow and tossed it under the blankets, in front of his crotch. She climbed in, snuggling up so that he could spoon her. They shared his pillow, leaving him breathing in the comforting scent of her hair.

Her fingers lightly glided along his arm, carefully avoiding the fresh, post-shower bandage. “How’re you doing?”

“Nearly good as new.”

“You’re still taking it easy for a couple more days, to be sure the last of the toxin is out of your system.”

“Mmhuh,” he murmured.

“Dean and Cas should be back in three days. I guess it was a big ghoul nest. Dean said he’d get Bobby to do damage control.”

He’d been pretty disoriented after the fight, but he had a vague recollection that Ruby had learned the location of the female camazotz. It wouldn’t have surprised him if she had slipped away to finish the job.

“Did you get the female?” he asked.

She lay there for a long while, delicately caressing his arm before answering. “No. By the time I got through to Dean it was too late. He put in some calls, got the three stooges to check it out. She’s gone; two fresh victims in the motel room.”

He buried his face into her hair a bit more and sighed. One camazotz was dead; the other escaped, possibility to bring about more. And at least eleven people were dead. It was hard to feel like that was a win, let alone a draw.

“Maybe I could’ve made it back there in time, but I didn’t want to leave you alone like that,” she told him. “I made the call. I’d do it again without a doubt. You were hurt—I picked you.” She exhaled an unamused chuckle. “Maybe that makes us bad partners.”

“You bludgeoned to death something that can’t be killed with an angel blade for me,” he corrected while taking her hand in his. “Whatever this is, it’s not all weakness.”

* * *

Sam woke up several hours later. The bedroom was dark, but unlike every other night he’d spent in it, it didn’t feel sterile and cold. His arms and legs were intertwined with Ruby’s as he held her soothing, warm body for comfort. His cheek and nose rested against her neck. He gave her a delicate kiss just below the jaw. Her fingertips caressed his skin as they traveled along his arm, to hold his hand.

He watched cool light from the nightstand clock ever-so-slightly illuminate her face. As impressed as he was by her defeating the camazotz with her bare hands for him, he wasn’t surprised. She was incredible and good at her job. He had absolute confidence in her kicking an enemy’s ass, especially in order to save his life. The thing that was particularly touching was that she’d stayed with him instead of running off to finish the job. She had prioritized his well-being over the hunt or vengeance or pride. She’d actually expressed concerns that she cared too much about him; that was something new for him.

For his entire life, he’d keep a level of distance between himself and others. Of course there were the obvious sources of embarrassment that he’d hidden: his background as a hunter, his status as a psychic, and his orientation, to name a few. But there had also been trauma building walls around him. In addition to being taken advantage of by Meg when she’d possessed him, he’d also been unintentionally violated by several of his romantic partners over the years. Each instance had been someone carelessly or willfully taking him beyond his limits while he was helpless or too frightened to say no.

In that peaceful moment, with Ruby, he didn’t feel helpless or scared. When faced with his personal boundaries, she’d never pushed him or judged him. He’d never owed her a justification, only whatever insights he might learn about himself. They were on a journey together, and he was so grateful to not have to face it alone.

She was right that their relationship didn’t need to conform to some archetype: human, heteronormative, or the pattern of abuse he’d faced in the past. What was happening between them was between  _ them _ . When it came right down to it, he trusted her—profoundly, in ways that he hadn’t dreamed of.

Yes; they put their lives in each other’s hands all the time, but more recently he’d started to be truly vulnerable to her. He’d opened himself up on a level that he hadn’t previously attempted with anyone else. She’d accepted a piece of him that he’d never accepted himself. In a way, she had already touched him more than any overly-aggressive past lover or even Meg—but it wasn’t in an act of taking. Her understanding and support had reached into the long-abandoned corners of his heart and given him something.

Together, they were learning what intimacy meant for them. He didn’t know whether allowing her into his body would be beyond his comfort, but she wasn’t like the others. He trusted her.

Sam rolled over and turned the nightstand light on, then propped himself up on his elbow. “I want to try it.”

“Try what?” she asked, understandably confused by the non-sequitur.

“You inside me.” It sounded a bit odd when he said it aloud, but that didn’t dissuade him.

Ruby stared up at him, eyebrows raised at the turn. “You sure about this?” She quickly pushed herself up into a sitting position, then asked, “Are you feeling okay? Are you still loopy?”

“I’m fine,” he assured her. He appreciated that she was making sure he could actually consent. “I am. I was just thinking, and— This thing between us: it’s you and me. Not my old partners, not my old demons, not definitions or what’s typical.” He took her hand. “We’re figuring this out together, and I trust you.”

“If it’s too much, just say the word and I’ll be out before you even finish the thought.” 

He leaned in to kiss her, but she reached up and touched his chest, briefly stopping him. Her eyes searched his face, trying to gauge his comfort. She wasn’t about to settle for anything less than sincere conviction. That desire for consent, another manifestation of her respecting his boundaries—It made her all the more beautiful, set apart from the traumas of the past. With that small gesture, she hadn’t ever been more attractive to him.

“I want to do this,” he assured her, then kissed her.

As their lips parted, he breathed her in. She nearly tasted sweet following the initial smokiness. He wasn’t sure what to expect: whether she’d weigh heavily in his chest or otherwise penetrate him in some invasive way. Instead she gently faded through the walls of his lungs, passing along his circulatory system. He could feel her tingling warmth pulse through him. She was actually in his heart, beating with him. 

Her touch spread up his spine, cupping the back of his skull, sending waves of pleasure through the back of his brain. In some bizarre way it reminded him of the opposite of his visions. Her grasp was warmth and soothing. He was grounded in the present, in their shared moment.

When he’d fully taken her in, Sam collapsed back onto the bed. She was with him, but she wasn’t pushing him into anything. When he was ready, he slipped off his boxers and began stroking himself. He could nearly feel Ruby hum inside him. As the blood began surging to his dick, making him harder, he could feel her presence move downward. She was subtly playing with him, sending warm tingles throughout his body, but especially his crotch. The act was so unlike anything he’d experienced that it didn’t trigger his anxiety. 

With each stroke he could feel her pulse until they were in perfect rhythm. Pleasure radiated through his body, and it only seemed to build as, deep inside of him, Ruby flared, echoing the sensation. It felt as though he could feel her crying out as she came with him, sending a powerful rush of tingling that engulfed his brain, delicately held there and nurtured by her. For a few seconds he couldn’t even see or tell which direction was up. The shared orgasm in his single body had briefly overwhelmed him, but after taking a moment he recovered.

He was too stunned to articulate some quip like, “Was it good for you?” though he suspected that she could feel the sentiment. Never before had he shared that sort of pleasure. It was unconventional, but at that point, he didn’t care in the slightest. He was happy. Ruby was happy. That was all that mattered.

He could feel her begin to draw from him. Her cloud paused briefly to caress his lips on her way out, giving him a kiss that only she could. Once she was out, he quickly ran to the bathroom to wash himself off. When he got back, he slipped on his boxers, then climbed in bed to snuggle with her. There was so much to say about the new discovery in their journey, but the release and the peace overtook him. He fell asleep before he knew it.

* * *

The next morning, Sam woke up, holding hands with Ruby. She was lying there, contently in his embrace, greeting him with a smile and her twinkling dark eyes, silently taking in the moment. He wanted to stay there with her, just like that, for the rest of the day. He wanted to make coffee for her while she sat on the kitchen counter in her pajama pants and a soft t-shirt without a bra. He wanted to drive across five states, listening to her tell silly stories for hours while on their way to a job. He wanted so many new moments on their journey together.

A strange thought struck him from out of nowhere: maybe he was in love.

In a quiet voice Sam asked, “Is this what it’s like?”

“Is this like what?”

“Having someone.”

Her slightly confused expression softened in what appeared to be a moment of realization, but there wasn't any concern or shock in her body language. She thought for a moment, then gently squeezed his hand in reassurance.

“Yeah,” she whispered, through a tightness in her throat that mirrored his own. “It is.”


End file.
